Robert -  the read-only seemed harmless  and as far as security that
could get ugly,  We sue CA TSS thru PAM calls and I would not want even
ask what that would cause.  really thank you for taking the time

Richard (Gaz) Gasiorowski
Solution Architect
CSC
3170 Fairview Park Dr., Falls Church, VA 22042
845-889-8533|Work|845-392-7889 Cell|rgasi...@csc.com|www.csc.com




This is a PRIVATE message. If you are not the intended recipient, please
delete without copying and kindly advise us by e-mail of the mistake in
delivery.
NOTE: Regardless of content, this e-mail shall not operate to bind CSC to
any order or other contract unless pursuant to explicit written agreement
or government initiative expressly permitting the use of e-mail for such
purpose.



From:
RPN01 <nix.rob...@mayo.edu>
To:
LINUX-390@vm.marist.edu
Date:
11/07/2011 10:54 AM
Subject:
Re: mvsdasd



Since you got no replies, I took a quick look at the site. Since it
creates
a read-only mount, I don't see how you're going to hurt anything, so that
would eliminate any of the "scary" portion, in terms of Sysplex membership
concerns.

Security concerns should be controlled from a z/VM standpoint, in that if
you don't want the Linux image to see it, don't give it a link to the
disk.
If you're worried about a rogue z/VM administrator, he's got CMS, which
could do far more damage than a Linux image.

The mvsdasd driver doesn't support pdse or vsam, so it can't see most of
what z/OS does these days. I'm not too sure how useful it would be, other
than to get a view into flat files for the exchange of information meant
specifically for z/OS to Linux communications. On this point, it could be
fairly handy, but most sites will already have ftp or nfs traffic in place
to do this. Giving access to an entire disk to access a single text file
doesn't seem practical, and doesn't account for the fact that files'
locations aren't fixed in z/OS, so a great deal of legwork would be
involved
just in locating the file and setting up the transaction, where FTP could
be
far more simple and straight forward.

The driver itself makes a number of assumptions about the way z/OS sites
"do
business" that smack of 1980's thinking. The z/OS world generally doesn't
work this way any more at the majority of sites, which leaves this
technology in the dust. In today's world, you never specify the volume
where
a file will be created. The system takes care of this, based on standards
set up by the administrators.

It certainly wouldn't work here at all. I wouldn't even be able to get the
"security file" on a volume here, as its name doesn't fit into the file
naming standard here. The high-level-qualifier doesn't match anything used
here, and so could never be created. They've written this for their own
site, without any thought about what might be required anywhere else.

It's a product that solved problems 30 years ago. It just got written far
too late.

Hope this helps.

--
Robert P. Nix          Mayo Foundation        .~.
RO-OC-1-18             200 First Street SW    /V\
507-284-0844           Rochester, MN 55905   /( )\
-----                                        ^^-^^
"In theory, theory and practice are the same, but
 in practice, theory and practice are different."


On 11/6/11 2:19 PM, "Richard Gasiorowski" <rgasi...@csc.com> wrote:

> Going to ask again since the first message was so popular I received no
> responses.  has anyone used this driver from mvsdasd.org? Interested in
> any experience comments and gotcha's. Seems scary to open up z/VM access
> to z/OS DASD which is a member of a sysplex.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or
visit
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information on Linux on System z, visit
http://wiki.linuxvm.org/



----------------------------------------------------------------------
For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information on Linux on System z, visit
http://wiki.linuxvm.org/

Reply via email to