Re: RQD disappears [Deutsche Boerse Systems: Virus checked]

2003-10-15 Thread Stefan Raabe
Dmitry,

did you check CSQINP2 of the queuemanager for a DELETE QREMOTE(...) statement?
Do you have any cleanup Jobs started by automation after MQ shutdown / before MQ
restart?
Or maybe you coded a delete with a define afterwards (CSQINP2, jobs, ...but the
define fails for some reason?

Is the queuemanager member of a queue sharing group, and maybe the remotequeue
is a group entry in an
other queuemanager and the local copy is purged because there is something wrong
with the group entry (a message for
the deletion should be in the mstr log in this case).

If you are at Version 5.3, you could switch on configuration events and check
for the queue deletion in the event queue.

You could also check right after the shutdown and  right before the restart with
csqutil and SDEFS if the
object definition is still there, so maybe this helps to identify the time the
definition is lost...

Just some guesses

Regards, Stefan
|+-+--+|
||   Dmitry|  ||
||   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |           To:       [EMAIL PROTECTED] ||
|| |           cc:        (bcc: Stefan Raabe/DBS/GDB)^||
||   15.10.2003 08:12  |           Subject:        RQD disappears [Deutsche   ||
||   Please respond to |   Boerse Systems: Virus checked] ||
||   MQSeries List |  ||
|| |  ||
|+-+--+|








        Hi!

    We use MQS on OS390 and recently have faced one strange fact. We created
Remote Queue Definition in our Queue Manager, during several weeks it had been
working succesfully. But when we restarted and again started the subsystem, it
disappeared! We created RQD again and tried this trick one more time - and got
the same result - it disappeared! Though all the 'normal', i.e. local queues,
were present...

Does someone can tell me the reason of this disappearence?

Best regards, Dmitry Nevsky


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Question on message groups

2003-10-15 Thread Jeff A Tressler
A sending application uses message groups. It sends a large number
of messages (1000+) in each group.

The receiving application reads each message from the group and
does a MQCMIT every message. For some reason, the receiving
application cannot wait for the entire group to do the commit.

What happens if the receiving application fails for some reason when
it is half way through the group?

It has committed many of the messages so they do not exist on the
queue anymore. When the receiving app starts back up, will it begin
reading the rest of the messages or will there be some problem.

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Re: queue manager does not exist error

2003-10-15 Thread Wyatt, T. Rob
If the restore found files under /var/mqm/qmgrsyourqmgr but yourqmgr was
not listed in the mqs.ini file, then your MQ installation got out of synch
at some point.  Not sure what to suggest at this point.  You might want to
try renaming /var/mqm/qmgrsyourqmgr to something else and using crtmqm to
create a new yourqmgr.  Then copy the saved files over top of the new
/var/mqm/qmgrsyourqmgr.  This will make the correct entries in the mqs.ini
file for you and then restore the old QMgr structure.  Alternatively, you
could edit the mqs.ini file directly to add the entries or search your older
archives for an intact installation.

Good luck!
-- T.Rob

-Original Message-
From: Prithwiraj Basu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 4:07 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: queue manager does not exist error


That's odd because after doing the restore on the WHOLE tree (i.e.
/var/mqm) my /var/mqm/mqs.ini does not have any queue manager names entries
in it.  In fact here are the contents (pasted below).  Is this ini file in
order?  Thanks.

Prits

##
#*  *#
#* START_COPYRIGHT*#
#* Licensed Materials - Property of IBM *#
#*  *#
#* 63H9336  *#
#* (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1994, 2000 *#
#*  *#
#* END_COPYRIGHT  *#
#*  *#
##
#***#
#* Module Name: mqs.ini*#
#* Type   : MQSeries Machine-wide Configuration File   *#
#* Function   : Define MQSeries resources for an entire machine*#
#* *#
#***#
#* Notes  :*#
#* 1) This is the installation time default configuration  *#
#* *#
#***#
AllQueueManagers:
   ##
   #* The path to the qmgrs directory, below which queue manager data  *#
   #* is stored*#
   ##
   DefaultPrefix=/var/mqm

ClientExitPath:
   ExitsDefaultPath=/var/mqm/exits

LogDefaults:
   LogPrimaryFiles=3
   LogSecondaryFiles=2
   LogFilePages=1024
   LogType=CIRCULAR
   LogBufferPages=17
   LogDefaultPath=/var/mqm/log




 Wyatt, T. Rob
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 OFAMERICA.COM To
 Sent by: MQSeries [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 List   cc
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 n.AC.AT  Subject
   Re: queue manager does not exist
   error
 10/14/2003 03:20
 PM


 Please respond to
   MQSeries List
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 n.AC.AT






Yes.  Ideally, the correct file will be from the same date as the
/var/mqm/qmgrs/yourqmgr tree that was previously restored.  My
recommendation to restore all of /var/mqm at once was to insure that all
files would be in synch.  Restoring just mqs.ini will probably work if your
MQ environment is fairly stable.

-- T.Rob

-Original Message-
From: Prithwiraj Basu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 2:39 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: queue manager does not exist error


Thanks for the responses.  If the correct /var/mqm/mqs.ini is restored,
then will there be an entry in it with my queue manager name (i.e. the one
that is missing)?  Thanks.

Prits



 Wyatt, T. Rob
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 OFAMERICA.COM To
 Sent by: MQSeries [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 List   cc
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 n.AC.AT  Subject
   Re: queue manager does not exist
   error
 

Question about OS Upgrade and MQSeries

2003-10-15 Thread Prithwiraj Basu
Hi All,

We have upgraded our Unix OS from Sun Solaris 8 to Sun Solaris 9.  While
doing so, the IT team blew away the old MQSeries objects.  My question is:
Can this be avoided?  I.e. can the OS be upgraded without blowing away the
MQSeries objects as that would help us in future?  Thanks.

Prits

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Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
Title: Penetrating an outbound firewall



T.Rob
wrote:
"Every
time I bring this up, people always reply that you can accomplish the same thing
with an exit or MCAUSER. My answer to that is that you cannot restrict
traffic to a specific channel. For example, if you define XYZ.RCVR with
MCAUSER('xyz'), there is nothing to prevent ABC Corp from connecting to
it."

If ABC
corp connects to XYZ.RCVR, and XYZ.RCVR has a MCA USer Identifier set to 'xyz',
then all the messages coming across this channelwill have xyz, even ABC's
messages. How is that different than if the ABC got to XYZ.RCVR through another
listner / port? If ABC connects XYZ.RCVR overport , where a listener
is running as def, aren't the messages still put as xyz, not def, xyz is in the
MCAUSER?





Also,
you mentioned "we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF* objects". I tried deleting
SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE on a dummy QM, and now I cant create any queues,
which I suppose is the goal. But does that meaning that from this point forward,
I can never create any more local queues on this QM?




  -Original Message-From: Wyatt, T. Rob
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, September 05,
  2003 4:44 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re:
  Penetrating an outbound firewall
  Peter,
  
  I've
  not used MQIPT so I don't know what security concerns it addresses - or
  introduces. Since I work for a bank, I always start with the assumption
  that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and Itry to nail them down as
  tight as possible. In my shop we would do that last paragraph regardless
  of any assumed security provided by MQIPT, our firewall or private
  circuits. 
  
  And
  that's just the beginning. In the DMZ we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
  objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the internal-facing channels to
  internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL where available). We
  also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a SVRCONN for external
  use. As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger Monitor are turned off
  unless specifically required. If we do run a trigger monitor,
  itruns under a low-privileged ID. All channels use MCAUSER set to
  a low-privileged ID. The QMgr runs under an ID other than mqm and mqm is
  removed from the mqm group. UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to
  SET*. All of these configurations address one or more specific
  vulnerabilities and when you apply all of them in combination, it is VERY
  difficult to get admin access to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and
  channels for other than their intended use.
  
  Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr "for outbound messaging
  (to other companies)" and I notice that's plural. Are you hosting
  interfaces tomore than one company on the same QMgr? In that case,
  I would DEFINITELY want to lock down each interface under a separate ID.
  Can you imagine the fallout if company A used your MQ interface to maliciously
  attack Company B? If your naming standards make it easy to guess channel
  names and queue names based on customer name or ID, hijacking someone else's
  channel or queue is not so farfetched. Hell, you might even do it by
  accident when copying MQSC scripts from one customer to another and miss the
  RNAME in a QREMOTE or something. If you made this mistake with the
  listener running as mqm, nothing would stop the messages from going to the
  wrong queue or out to the wrong customer.
  
  --
  T.Rob
  
-Original Message-From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, September 05,
2003 3:59 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re:
Penetrating an outbound firewall
T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that still necessary if


A.
Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for outbound messaging (to other
companies)sitting in the DMZ 

and 

B.
MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any outside
companies?

(There are very specific firewall rules between the DMZ queue manager
and the internal queue manager inside of the internal firewall that it
connects to.)



  -Original Message-From: Wyatt, T. Rob
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, September
  05, 2003 12:19 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject:
  Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall
  Doug,
  
  We are using direct MQ connections with firewall rules as specified
  in MA86
  (http://www-3.ibm.com/software/integration/support/supportpacs/individual/supportpacs/ma86.pdf).
  
  This has been working fine for us except that servers with dual
  NICs or virtual IP addresses (our Veritas clusters), the socket would
  sometimes bind to a different address under MQpre-5.3 and be blocked
  by the firewall. Prior to 5.3 we had to set up rules for the
  physical AND virtual addresses since the binding was unspecified.
  The LOCALADDR field has really simplified things. We have tried
 

Peter Gersak/Slovenia/IBM is out of the office.

2003-10-15 Thread Peter Gersak
I will be out of the office starting October 15, 2003 and will not return
until October 16, 2003.

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Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
Title: Message



T.Rob,
What do you think of just stopping the command server? My thinking
is if they have access to the box to start the command server locally, they can
just as easily use runmqsc to create the queue. True, it is an extra step, but
does it buy us anything really to delete the command queue on top of stopping
the command server?




As a
side note, does anyone know of an MQ class just for security. I am writing up a
doc for Security for MQ at our company, and man, this is a subject unto
itself!


  -Original Message-From: Wyatt, T. Rob
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday, September
  10, 2003 8:27 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re:
  Penetrating an outbound firewall
  You
  can't. Without going into too much detail, you would need an agent that
  doesn't rely on the command server, a command server that used a different
  queue, or you would have to define the queue and start thecommand server
  each time. These options may seem like a royal pain but then the whole
  purpose is to make it hard to administer the QMgr by building significant
  hurdles for a malicious user to overcome. With appropriate automation,
  none of these are particularly burdensome for the legitimate admin
  team.
  
  --
  T.Rob
  
-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003
8:47 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re:
Penetrating an outbound firewall

T.Rob,

If
you delete the SYSTEM.ADMIN.COMMAND.QUEUE how do you send command messages
?... sorry if this appears to bea stupid question.

Sid

  
  -Original Message-From: Wyatt, T.
  Rob [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 6
  September 2003 6:44 AMTo:
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound
  firewall
  Peter,
  
  I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security concerns it
  addresses - or introduces. Since I work for a bank, I always start
  with the assumption that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and
  Itry to nail them down as tight as possible. In my shop we
  would do that last paragraph regardless of any assumed security provided
  by MQIPT, our firewall or private circuits. 
  
  And that's just the beginning. In the DMZ we also delete all
  SYSTEM.DEF* objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the internal-facing channels
  to internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL where
  available). We also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
  SVRCONN for external use. As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
  Monitor are turned off unless specifically required. If we do run a
  trigger monitor, itruns under a low-privileged ID. All
  channels use MCAUSER set to a low-privileged ID. The QMgr runs under
  an ID other than mqm and mqm is removed from the mqm group. UserIDs
  in the DMZ are never authorized to SET*. All of these configurations
  address one or more specific vulnerabilities and when you apply all of
  them in combination, it is VERY difficult to get admin access to the QMgr
  from outside or to hijack queues and channels for other than their
  intended use.
  
  Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr "for outbound
  messaging (to other companies)" and I notice that's plural. Are you
  hosting interfaces tomore than one company on the same QMgr?
  In that case, I would DEFINITELY want to lock down each interface under a
  separate ID. Can you imagine the fallout if company A used your MQ
  interface to maliciously attack Company B? If your naming standards
  make it easy to guess channel names and queue names based on customer name
  or ID, hijacking someone else's channel or queue is not so
  farfetched. Hell, you might even do it by accident when copying MQSC
  scripts from one customer to another and miss the RNAME in a QREMOTE or
  something. If you made this mistake with the listener running as
  mqm, nothing would stop the messages from going to the wrong queue or out
  to the wrong customer.
  
  -- T.Rob
  
-Original Message-From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC,
IT) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday,
September 05, 2003 3:59 PMTo:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound
firewall
T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that still necessary
if 

A. Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for outbound
messaging (to other companies)sitting in the DMZ


and 

B. MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any outside
companies?

(There are very specific firewall rules between the DMZ queue
manager and the internal queue manager inside of the internal firewall
that it connects to.)



Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Sam Garforth
I think you should be able to create queues using the
LIKE parameter.

Sam

 --- Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:  T.Rob wrote:
 Every time I bring this up, people always reply
 that you can accomplish the
 same thing with an exit or MCAUSER.  My answer to
 that is that you cannot
 restrict traffic to a specific channel.  For
 example, if you define XYZ.RCVR
 with MCAUSER('xyz'), there is nothing to prevent ABC
 Corp from connecting to
 it.

 If ABC corp connects to XYZ.RCVR, and XYZ.RCVR has a
 MCA USer Identifier set
 to 'xyz', then all the messages coming across this
 channel will have xyz,
 even ABC's messages. How is that different than if
 the ABC got to XYZ.RCVR
 through another listner / port? If ABC connects
 XYZ.RCVR over port ,
 where a listener is running as def, aren't the
 messages still put as xyz,
 not def, xyz is in the MCAUSER?





 Also, you mentioned we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects. I tried
 deleting SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE on a dummy QM,
 and now I cant create any
 queues, which I suppose is the goal. But does that
 meaning that from this
 point forward, I can never create any more local
 queues on this QM?




 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 4:44 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Peter,

 I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security
 concerns it addresses - or
 introduces.  Since I work for a bank, I always start
 with the assumption
 that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and I try
 to nail them down as
 tight as possible.  In my shop we would do that last
 paragraph regardless of
 any assumed security provided by MQIPT, our firewall
 or private circuits.

 And that's just the beginning.  In the DMZ we also
 delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the
 internal-facing channels to
 internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL
 where available).  We
 also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
 SVRCONN for external
 use.  As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
 Monitor are turned off
 unless specifically required.  If we do run a
 trigger monitor, it runs under
 a low-privileged ID.  All channels use MCAUSER set
 to a low-privileged ID.
 The QMgr runs under an ID other than mqm and mqm is
 removed from the mqm
 group.  UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to
 SET*.  All of these
 configurations address one or more specific
 vulnerabilities and when you
 apply all of them in combination, it is VERY
 difficult to get admin access
 to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and
 channels for other than
 their intended use.

 Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) and I notice that's plural.  Are
 you hosting interfaces to
 more than one company on the same QMgr?  In that
 case, I would DEFINITELY
 want to lock down each interface under a separate
 ID.  Can you imagine the
 fallout if company A used your MQ interface to
 maliciously attack Company B?
 If your naming standards make it easy to guess
 channel names and queue names
 based on customer name or ID, hijacking someone
 else's channel or queue is
 not so farfetched.  Hell, you might even do it by
 accident when copying MQSC
 scripts from one customer to another and miss the
 RNAME in a QREMOTE or
 something.  If you made this mistake with the
 listener running as mqm,
 nothing would stop the messages from going to the
 wrong queue or out to the
 wrong customer.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 3:59 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that
 still necessary if

 A. Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) sitting in the DMZ

 and

 B. MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any
 outside companies?

 (There are very specific firewall rules between the
 DMZ queue manager and
 the internal queue manager inside of the internal
 firewall that it connects
 to.)



 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 12:19 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Doug,

 We are using direct MQ connections with firewall
 rules as specified in MA86
 (

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/integration/support/supportpacs/individual/sup
 portpacs/ma86.pdf

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/integration/support/supportpacs/individual/su
 pportpacs/ma86.pdf ).

 This has been working fine for us except that
 servers with dual NICs or
 virtual IP addresses (our Veritas clusters), the
 socket would sometimes bind
 to a different address under MQ pre-5.3 and be
 blocked by the firewall.
 Prior to 5.3 we had to set up rules for the physical
 AND virtual addresses
 since the binding was 

Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Sam Garforth
Try
http://www.sjg-enterpriseintegration.com/oamsecurity.asp
and
http://www.sjg-enterpriseintegration.com/closingmqholes.asp

 --- Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:  T.Rob,
  What do you think of just stopping the command
 server? My thinking is if
 they have access to the box to start the command
 server locally, they can
 just as easily use runmqsc to create the queue.
 True, it is an extra step,
 but does it buy us anything really to delete the
 command queue on top of
 stopping the command server?




 As a side note, does anyone know of an MQ class just
 for security. I am
 writing up a doc for Security for MQ at our company,
 and man, this is a
 subject unto itself!


 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 8:27 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 You can't.  Without going into too much detail, you
 would need an agent that
 doesn't rely on the command server, a command server
 that used a different
 queue, or you would have to define the queue and
 start the command server
 each time.  These options may seem like a royal pain
 but then the whole
 purpose is to make it hard to administer the QMgr by
 building significant
 hurdles for a malicious user to overcome.  With
 appropriate automation, none
 of these are particularly burdensome for the
 legitimate admin team.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 8:47 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall



 T.Rob,

 If you delete the SYSTEM.ADMIN.COMMAND.QUEUE how do
 you send command
 messages ?... sorry if this appears to be a stupid
 question.

 Sid

 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Saturday, 6 September 2003 6:44 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Peter,

 I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security
 concerns it addresses - or
 introduces.  Since I work for a bank, I always start
 with the assumption
 that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and I try
 to nail them down as
 tight as possible.  In my shop we would do that last
 paragraph regardless of
 any assumed security provided by MQIPT, our firewall
 or private circuits.

 And that's just the beginning.  In the DMZ we also
 delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the
 internal-facing channels to
 internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL
 where available).  We
 also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
 SVRCONN for external
 use.  As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
 Monitor are turned off
 unless specifically required.  If we do run a
 trigger monitor, it runs under
 a low-privileged ID.  All channels use MCAUSER set
 to a low-privileged ID.
 The QMgr runs under an ID other than mqm and mqm is
 removed from the mqm
 group.  UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to
 SET*.  All of these
 configurations address one or more specific
 vulnerabilities and when you
 apply all of them in combination, it is VERY
 difficult to get admin access
 to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and
 channels for other than
 their intended use.

 Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) and I notice that's plural.  Are
 you hosting interfaces to
 more than one company on the same QMgr?  In that
 case, I would DEFINITELY
 want to lock down each interface under a separate
 ID.  Can you imagine the
 fallout if company A used your MQ interface to
 maliciously attack Company B?
 If your naming standards make it easy to guess
 channel names and queue names
 based on customer name or ID, hijacking someone
 else's channel or queue is
 not so farfetched.  Hell, you might even do it by
 accident when copying MQSC
 scripts from one customer to another and miss the
 RNAME in a QREMOTE or
 something.  If you made this mistake with the
 listener running as mqm,
 nothing would stop the messages from going to the
 wrong queue or out to the
 wrong customer.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 3:59 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that
 still necessary if

 A. Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) sitting in the DMZ

 and

 B. MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any
 outside companies?

 (There are very specific firewall rules between the
 DMZ queue manager and
 the internal queue manager inside of the internal
 firewall that it connects
 to.)



 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 12:19 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Doug,

 We are 

MQ Series Segmentation

2003-10-15 Thread Usha Suryadevara

Greetings,

Have anyone used MQ segmentation ?

Is it possible to activate MQ segmentation in a client server scenario ?
I mean between MQ client and MQ server. 

This is what i am doing, say i have 3 segments,

MQPUT
PMO MQPMO_LOGICAL_ORDER
MD MQMF_SEGMENT (all 3 segments)
MQMF_LAST_SEGMENT (last segment )

MQGET
GMO MQGMO_COMPLETE_MSG
MD No options set

Also the Version number for MQMD to MQMD_VERSION_2.

Now when i put a message it segments it right, but when i do a MQGET it
gets only the first segment, not the whole message. :(.

The documentation i was reading says that QM upon receiving the
segments reassembles it when an MQGET is issued.. . Does this mean
that the segments cannot be re-assembled if the receiving application is
an MQ client ? 

There is a work around that i can keep checking the for the 
mdDescriptor.MsgFlags
= MQMF_LAST_SEGMENT
i
think... didn't try this yet but might work.


Any information is appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Usha




Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
Thanks I have seen these very informative docs. They don't address T.Rob's
suggestion of deleting the queue altogether. I am curious if it is a
benificial extra step or not.


-Original Message-
From: Sam Garforth [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 11:48 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


Try
http://www.sjg-enterpriseintegration.com/oamsecurity.asp
and
http://www.sjg-enterpriseintegration.com/closingmqholes.asp

 --- Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:  T.Rob,
  What do you think of just stopping the command
 server? My thinking is if
 they have access to the box to start the command
 server locally, they can
 just as easily use runmqsc to create the queue.
 True, it is an extra step,
 but does it buy us anything really to delete the
 command queue on top of
 stopping the command server?




 As a side note, does anyone know of an MQ class just
 for security. I am
 writing up a doc for Security for MQ at our company,
 and man, this is a
 subject unto itself!


 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 8:27 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 You can't.  Without going into too much detail, you
 would need an agent that
 doesn't rely on the command server, a command server
 that used a different
 queue, or you would have to define the queue and
 start the command server
 each time.  These options may seem like a royal pain
 but then the whole
 purpose is to make it hard to administer the QMgr by
 building significant
 hurdles for a malicious user to overcome.  With
 appropriate automation, none
 of these are particularly burdensome for the
 legitimate admin team.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 8:47 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall



 T.Rob,

 If you delete the SYSTEM.ADMIN.COMMAND.QUEUE how do
 you send command
 messages ?... sorry if this appears to be a stupid
 question.

 Sid

 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Saturday, 6 September 2003 6:44 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Peter,

 I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security
 concerns it addresses - or
 introduces.  Since I work for a bank, I always start
 with the assumption
 that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and I try
 to nail them down as
 tight as possible.  In my shop we would do that last
 paragraph regardless of
 any assumed security provided by MQIPT, our firewall
 or private circuits.

 And that's just the beginning.  In the DMZ we also
 delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the
 internal-facing channels to
 internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL
 where available).  We
 also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
 SVRCONN for external
 use.  As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
 Monitor are turned off
 unless specifically required.  If we do run a
 trigger monitor, it runs under
 a low-privileged ID.  All channels use MCAUSER set
 to a low-privileged ID.
 The QMgr runs under an ID other than mqm and mqm is
 removed from the mqm
 group.  UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to
 SET*.  All of these
 configurations address one or more specific
 vulnerabilities and when you
 apply all of them in combination, it is VERY
 difficult to get admin access
 to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and
 channels for other than
 their intended use.

 Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) and I notice that's plural.  Are
 you hosting interfaces to
 more than one company on the same QMgr?  In that
 case, I would DEFINITELY
 want to lock down each interface under a separate
 ID.  Can you imagine the
 fallout if company A used your MQ interface to
 maliciously attack Company B?
 If your naming standards make it easy to guess
 channel names and queue names
 based on customer name or ID, hijacking someone
 else's channel or queue is
 not so farfetched.  Hell, you might even do it by
 accident when copying MQSC
 scripts from one customer to another and miss the
 RNAME in a QREMOTE or
 something.  If you made this mistake with the
 listener running as mqm,
 nothing would stop the messages from going to the
 wrong queue or out to the
 wrong customer.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 3:59 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that
 still necessary if

 A. Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) sitting in the DMZ

 and

 B. MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any
 outside companies?

 (There 

Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
Thanks Sam.

That did it.

-Original Message-
From: Sam Garforth [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 11:08 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


I think you should be able to create queues using the
LIKE parameter.

Sam

 --- Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:  T.Rob wrote:
 Every time I bring this up, people always reply
 that you can accomplish the
 same thing with an exit or MCAUSER.  My answer to
 that is that you cannot
 restrict traffic to a specific channel.  For
 example, if you define XYZ.RCVR
 with MCAUSER('xyz'), there is nothing to prevent ABC
 Corp from connecting to
 it.

 If ABC corp connects to XYZ.RCVR, and XYZ.RCVR has a
 MCA USer Identifier set
 to 'xyz', then all the messages coming across this
 channel will have xyz,
 even ABC's messages. How is that different than if
 the ABC got to XYZ.RCVR
 through another listner / port? If ABC connects
 XYZ.RCVR over port ,
 where a listener is running as def, aren't the
 messages still put as xyz,
 not def, xyz is in the MCAUSER?





 Also, you mentioned we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects. I tried
 deleting SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE on a dummy QM,
 and now I cant create any
 queues, which I suppose is the goal. But does that
 meaning that from this
 point forward, I can never create any more local
 queues on this QM?




 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 4:44 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Peter,

 I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security
 concerns it addresses - or
 introduces.  Since I work for a bank, I always start
 with the assumption
 that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and I try
 to nail them down as
 tight as possible.  In my shop we would do that last
 paragraph regardless of
 any assumed security provided by MQIPT, our firewall
 or private circuits.

 And that's just the beginning.  In the DMZ we also
 delete all SYSTEM.DEF*
 objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the
 internal-facing channels to
 internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL
 where available).  We
 also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
 SVRCONN for external
 use.  As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
 Monitor are turned off
 unless specifically required.  If we do run a
 trigger monitor, it runs under
 a low-privileged ID.  All channels use MCAUSER set
 to a low-privileged ID.
 The QMgr runs under an ID other than mqm and mqm is
 removed from the mqm
 group.  UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to
 SET*.  All of these
 configurations address one or more specific
 vulnerabilities and when you
 apply all of them in combination, it is VERY
 difficult to get admin access
 to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and
 channels for other than
 their intended use.

 Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) and I notice that's plural.  Are
 you hosting interfaces to
 more than one company on the same QMgr?  In that
 case, I would DEFINITELY
 want to lock down each interface under a separate
 ID.  Can you imagine the
 fallout if company A used your MQ interface to
 maliciously attack Company B?
 If your naming standards make it easy to guess
 channel names and queue names
 based on customer name or ID, hijacking someone
 else's channel or queue is
 not so farfetched.  Hell, you might even do it by
 accident when copying MQSC
 scripts from one customer to another and miss the
 RNAME in a QREMOTE or
 something.  If you made this mistake with the
 listener running as mqm,
 nothing would stop the messages from going to the
 wrong queue or out to the
 wrong customer.

 -- T.Rob

 -Original Message-
 From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 3:59 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 T.Rob, in regards to your last paragraph, is that
 still necessary if

 A. Your queue manager is a dedicated one just for
 outbound messaging (to
 other companies) sitting in the DMZ

 and

 B. MQIPT sits between your DMZ queue manager and any
 outside companies?

 (There are very specific firewall rules between the
 DMZ queue manager and
 the internal queue manager inside of the internal
 firewall that it connects
 to.)



 -Original Message-
 From: Wyatt, T. Rob
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 12:19 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 Doug,

 We are using direct MQ connections with firewall
 rules as specified in MA86
 (

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/integration/support/supportpacs/individual/sup
 portpacs/ma86.pdf

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/integration/support/supportpacs/individual/su
 pportpacs/ma86.pdf ).

 This has been working fine for us except that
 servers with dual NICs or
 virtual IP addresses (our Veritas 

Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Luc-Michel Demey
 T.Rob,
  What do you think of just stopping the command server? My thinking
  is if
 they have access to the box to start the command server locally,
 they can just as easily use runmqsc to create the queue. True, it is
 an extra step, but does it buy us anything really to delete the
 command queue on top of stopping the command server?




 As a side note, does anyone know of an MQ class just for security. I
 am writing up a doc for Security for MQ at our company, and man,
 this is a subject unto itself!


Hi,
I have done extensive testing about security, hacking and so on, on
Queue Managers hosted on Windows and Unix boxes.

If you want to protect your QM from external attacks, throught
channels, the answer is SSL. Definitively.

You can play with MCAUSER, channels exits, firewalls, but ...
After applying the CSD, MQ5.3 SSL support works pretty well and is
able to secure in a decent way your QM from externam attacks.

If you want more (in-queue encryption), have a look at MQ Extended
Security Edition 5.3, who includes Policy Director.

HTH, Luc-Michel
--
Luc-Michel Demey - Freelance EAI Consultant
Paris / France Tel. : +33 6 08 755 655
http://consulting.demey.org/ - lmd at demey dot org

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
SSL will protect you from people you don't know from breaking in. You are
always sure of who the other side is with SSL.

I does nothing when the trusted guy on the other side decides to behave
badly. That is where all the other tricks come into play.

SSL in combination with all the other methods is the way to go I suppose.





-Original Message-
From: Luc-Michel Demey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 12:17 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall


 T.Rob,
  What do you think of just stopping the command server? My thinking
  is if
 they have access to the box to start the command server locally,
 they can just as easily use runmqsc to create the queue. True, it is
 an extra step, but does it buy us anything really to delete the
 command queue on top of stopping the command server?




 As a side note, does anyone know of an MQ class just for security. I
 am writing up a doc for Security for MQ at our company, and man,
 this is a subject unto itself!


Hi,
I have done extensive testing about security, hacking and so on, on
Queue Managers hosted on Windows and Unix boxes.

If you want to protect your QM from external attacks, throught
channels, the answer is SSL. Definitively.

You can play with MCAUSER, channels exits, firewalls, but ...
After applying the CSD, MQ5.3 SSL support works pretty well and is
able to secure in a decent way your QM from externam attacks.

If you want more (in-queue encryption), have a look at MQ Extended
Security Edition 5.3, who includes Policy Director.

HTH, Luc-Michel
--
Luc-Michel Demey - Freelance EAI Consultant
Paris / France Tel. : +33 6 08 755 655
http://consulting.demey.org/ - lmd at demey dot org

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


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Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Jim Ford
We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Bill Anderson
I like to make my own templets that incorporate any non default object
attributes. For instance, I have a template called TEMPLATE.XMIT.QUEUE that
is all set up to be a triggered transmit queue. When I want a transmit
queue (and all of mine are triggered) in the script I say DEFINE QLOCAL(Q
NAME) LIKE(TEMPLATE.XMIT.QUEUE) and I have a triggered transmit queue. Now
I can have the folks in ops build the definitions, and they don't have to
know anything about triggering a transmit queue.

It works well

Bill Anderson
Senior Systems Analyst
SITA Atlanta, GA
770-303-3503 (office)
404-915-3190 (cell)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.mconnect.aero/



  Potkay, Peter M
  (PLC, IT) To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]cc:
  RTFORD.COMSubject:  Re: Penetrating an outbound 
firewall
  Sent by: MQSeries
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  AC.AT


  10/15/2003 12:37 PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






Thanks T.Rob.

What about the channel question I had below. Am I missing something there?

  -Original Message-
  From: Wyatt, T. Rob [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 12:23 PM
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

  No, it just means you need to specify all the parameters.  If you run
  a saveqmgr it prints out runmqsc commands suitable for use on a QMgr
  with no SYSTEM.DEF* objects.  Use these as templates for your queue
  definitions if you need to add or change anything.  Make sure you run
  saveqmgr on the same server or at least one with a matching version
  of MQ.

  -- T.Rob
-Original Message-
From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 10:08 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

T.Rob wrote:
Every time I bring this up, people always reply that you can
accomplish the same thing with an exit or MCAUSER.  My answer
to that is that you cannot restrict traffic to a specific
channel.  For example, if you define XYZ.RCVR with MCAUSER
('xyz'), there is nothing to prevent ABC Corp from connecting
to it.

If ABC corp connects to XYZ.RCVR, and XYZ.RCVR has a MCA USer
Identifier set to 'xyz', then all the messages coming across
this channel will have xyz, even ABC's messages. How is that
different than if the ABC got to XYZ.RCVR through another
listner / port? If ABC connects XYZ.RCVR over port , where
a listener is running as def, aren't the messages still put as
xyz, not def, xyz is in the MCAUSER?





Also, you mentioned we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF* objects. I
tried deleting SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE on a dummy QM, and
now I cant create any queues, which I suppose is the goal. But
does that meaning that from this point forward, I can never
create any more local queues on this QM?



  -Original Message-
  From: Wyatt, T. Rob
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 4:44 PM
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

  Peter,

  I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security
  concerns it addresses - or introduces.  Since I work for
  a bank, I always start with the assumption that my DMZ
  servers are targets of attack and I try to nail them down
  as tight as possible.  In my shop we would do that last
  paragraph regardless of any assumed security provided by
  MQIPT, our firewall or private circuits.

  And that's just the beginning.  In the DMZ we also delete
  all SYSTEM.DEF* objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the
  internal-facing channels to internal-facing NICs and run
  security exits (or SSL where available).  We also never
  use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a SVRCONN for
  external use.  As a rule, the Command Server and Trigger
  Monitor are turned off unless specifically required.  If
  we do run a trigger monitor, it runs under a
  low-privileged ID.  All channels use MCAUSER set to a
  low-privileged ID.  The QMgr runs under an ID other than
  mqm and mqm is removed from the 

Re: MQ Series Segmentation

2003-10-15 Thread Usha Suryadevara

Hi Arun,

Thanks for
the info, are you saying that i *have* to loop through till i get all the
segments ?? I was under an impression that issuing one MQGET should
reassemble all the segments and give me one single final message..

- Usha


At 10:05 AM 10/15/2003 -0700, you wrote:
HI Usha

I have used segmentation but only in Server to Server
to scenario.

MQPUT
PMO MQPMO_LOGICAL_ORDER
MD MQMF_SEGMENT (all 3 segments)
MQMF_LAST_SEGMENT (last segment )

MQGET
1. Instead of GMO MQGMO_COMPLETE_MSG I have
used following options
GMO MQGMO_LOGICAL_ORDER + MQGMO_ALL_SEGMENTS_AVAILABLE +
MQGMO_WAIT;
2. MD No options set: 
In this case if You have to re-set msg-id and correl id , when you
loop through all the segments in the queue
to receive all the segments.

messageId =
MQMI_NONE;
correlationId = MQCI_NONE;

This worked for me in Server to Server case. try it with client-server
and let us know how it works.

Arun Makhija
Never argue with an
idiot. They drag you down to their level and beat you with
experience 

-Original Message-
From: Usha Suryadevara
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 8:57 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: MQ Series Segmentation


Greetings,


Have anyone used MQ segmentation ?


Is it possible to activate MQ segmentation in a client server
scenario ? I mean between MQ client and MQ server. 


This is what i am doing, say i have 3 segments,


MQPUT
PMO MQPMO_LOGICAL_ORDER
MD MQMF_SEGMENT (all 3 segments)
MQMF_LAST_SEGMENT (last segment )


MQGET
GMO MQGMO_COMPLETE_MSG
MD No options set


Also the Version number for MQMD to MQMD_VERSION_2.


Now when i put a message it segments it right, but when i do a MQGET
it gets only the first segment, not the whole message. :(.


The documentation i was reading says that QM upon receiving the
segments reassembles it when an MQGET is issued.. . Does this mean
that the segments cannot be re-assembled if the receiving application is
an MQ client ? 


There is a work around that i can keep checking the for the
mdDescriptor.MsgFlags
= MQMF_LAST_SEGMENT
i
think... didn't try this yet but might work.




Any information is appreciated.


Thanks in advance
Usha



Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Thomas, Don
Jim,
When you sit down the SAN people ask them to run a little test with
you. Suggest to them a schedule of when they will run these replications
over the next week or two. During that time be sure to collect and maintain
the application audit logs. After the test period you should be able to use
the audit logs of the applications to show that at no other time does this
problem occur. It sounds like that during these 'pauses' there is no disk
i/o going on at all. If there are applications other than MQ related apps,
see if you can get some information showing these 'pauses' are also
affecting them.

Don Thomas
EDS - PASC
* Phone: +01-412-893-1659
 Fax: 412-893-1844
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 2:34 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Rick Tsujimoto
Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem - Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Jim Ford
Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ Problem - 
Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Thomas, Don
Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well, don't do that anymore.

But seriously, try to find other applications that are experiencing these
pause also, then they would look rather foolish asking everyone to defend
their apps. It's pretty apparent that whatever they are doing is hogging all
of the disk i/o, and the MQPUT is definitely a disk intensive operation.

Don Thomas
EDS - PASC
* Phone: +01-412-893-1659
 Fax: 412-893-1844
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 3:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
These puts are persistent messages? If so, MQ has to write to the log. If
the log is on the SAN, MQ needs it available. If it is temporarily out, MQ
waits.


I dealt with the same thing with my HUB a few weeks ago. Remember the thread
about fast and normal channels and persistent and non persistent messages?
Even though my message were non persistent, the normal channels needed to
write to disk on each side. When the SAN guys were doing an upgrade, the HUB
had to wait, because the MCAs could not write to the channel sync queue.

We solved the problem by making a cluster with all channels set to FAST and
only allowing non persistent messages to go into this cluster.

Anytime the SAN gets updated, and MQ has persistent messages to deal with,
we wait. Fortunately, our blips are only a second or 2 long, so most
applications don't know the difference.



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 3:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


This communication, including attachments, is for the exclusive use of
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Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Jim Ford
That would be a solution. It seems unnecessary for me to have to do any
further legwork on this, just to get them to take ownership of something
that's so obviously their problem.

Maybe I just need to vent. Arrrgh!!! There. That's better.




  Thomas, Don
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: MQSeriesSubject:  Re: MQ Problem - Advice 
Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  N.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:30
  PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well, don't do that anymore.

But seriously, try to find other applications that are experiencing these
pause also, then they would look rather foolish asking everyone to defend
their apps. It's pretty apparent that whatever they are doing is hogging
all
of the disk i/o, and the MQPUT is definitely a disk intensive operation.

Don Thomas
EDS - PASC
* Phone: +01-412-893-1659
 Fax: 412-893-1844
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 3:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at 

Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Bill Anderson
Well, with the exception of what Peter said about persistent messages and
your logs (possibly) being on a SAN, an MQPUT returns rather quickly. If it
is possible to narrow down a time frame when this happens, you might be
able to do a trace of the MQ layer and determine what is going on. I get
the feeling though that you are unable to predict when this happens, or
re-create it at will.



Bill Anderson
Senior Systems Analyst
SITA Atlanta, GA
770-303-3503 (office)
404-915-3190 (cell)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.mconnect.aero/



  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  M   cc:
  Sent by: MQSeriesSubject:  Re: MQ Problem - Advice 
Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  N.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 03:20
  PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and how it
works.

It seems pretty obvious that they don't intend to work on this, and are in
the process of putting up a stonewall by shooting the messenger. It's much
like dealing with a difficult vendor, except the fact that we work for the
same company in some ways makes it even more difficult. I'd be tempted to
raise hell with a vendor, but that could be a career limiting move in this
case.

So... I'm interested if anyone has seen a similar problem. And I'm also
interested in any advice on how to get the SAN team to do the right thing
and take ownership of the problem.

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive

Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in
the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com
Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive


Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Pavel Tolkachev
I had a similar problem. It was even harder to detect because the bottleneck that time 
was SRDF link and iowait does not show  you anything meaningful when all these low 
level buffers are full. To investigate, it took writing a very simple C application. 
In pseudocode:

1. In a tight loop forever
1.0. print write started + timestamp.
1.1.   Write 100M of some garbage (it better to be random) into file A.
1.2. Close file A
1.3. Delete file A
1.4. Output write finished + timestamp.

Then capture the output for a period of 24 hours and find out if this simple program 
gives you same problems (like 2-minute delays). If your description is correct, it 
will. Then give it to your storage team and ask them for a cure. No MQ involved.

Hopefully this will help,
Pavel









  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  M   cc:
  Sent by: MQSeriesSubject:  Re: MQ Problem - Advice 
Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  n.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 03:56
  PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






That would be a solution. It seems unnecessary for me to have to do any
further legwork on this, just to get them to take ownership of something
that's so obviously their problem.

Maybe I just need to vent. Arrrgh!!! There. That's better.




  Thomas, Don
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: MQSeriesSubject:  Re: MQ Problem - Advice 
Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  N.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:30
  PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well, don't do that anymore.

But seriously, try to find other applications that are experiencing these
pause also, then they would look rather foolish asking everyone to defend
their apps. It's pretty apparent that whatever they are doing is hogging
all
of the disk i/o, and the MQPUT is definitely a disk intensive operation.

Don Thomas
EDS - PASC
* Phone: +01-412-893-1659
 Fax: 412-893-1844
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 3:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
  MQSeries List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally again. Many of our MQ apps on Solaris were written in the last two
years, and maintain exhaustive audit trails, Those audit trails showed that
their applications were waiting on an MQPUT for the entire time. Everything
on the machine pauses, by the way, but it's these MQ apps that keep the
audit trail.

So I did some investigation, and eventually discovered that the pauses
seemed to coincide with something our storage administrator was running. It
is a series of commands - issued on the mainframe - which causes our SAN to
replicate to our hotsite. I ran the Unix iostat command during the pauses,
and sure enough, the disk service times had gone way up, then back to a
couple milliseconds after.

So I told the storage team about it (2 months ago!). They claim not to see
any problems, and have now decided that it's an MQ problem. They want to
meet with me, and have me explain what the MQPUT command is, and 

Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall

2003-10-15 Thread Wyatt, T. Rob
Title: Penetrating an outbound firewall



Sorry,
I thought that was part of my quote at first glance.Yes, if the
channels are not protected anyone can connect to any inbound channel. The
total solution is to use an exit or SSL to restrict the inbound connections to
the appropriate channel, AND the MCAUSER to enforce the ID restrictions.
Using one or the other doesn't work. 

It
bears noting that the exit or SSL used must be placedon the protected
internalchannels and is optional on the external facing channel if you
only have one. A common mistake is placing theexiton the
external-facing channel andleaving the internal-facing ones
unprotected.

--
T.Rob

  -Original Message-From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC, IT)
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday, October 15,
  2003 12:37 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re:
  Penetrating an outbound firewall
  Thanks T.Rob. 
  
  What
  about the channel question I had below. Am I missing something
  there?
  
  
-Original Message-From: Wyatt, T. Rob
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday, October
15, 2003 12:23 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject:
Re: Penetrating an outbound firewall
No, it just means you need to specify all the parameters. If
you run a saveqmgr it prints out runmqsc commands suitable for use on a QMgr
with no SYSTEM.DEF* objects. Use these as templates for your queue
definitions if you need to add or change anything. Make sure you run
saveqmgr on the same server or at least one with a matching version of
MQ.

--
T.Rob

  -Original Message-From: Potkay, Peter M (PLC,
  IT) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday,
  October 15, 2003 10:08 AMTo:
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound
  firewall
  T.Rob wrote:
  "Every time I bring this up, people always reply that you can
  accomplish the same thing with an exit or MCAUSER. My answer to that
  is that you cannot restrict traffic to a specific channel. For
  example, if you define XYZ.RCVR with MCAUSER('xyz'), there is nothing to
  prevent ABC Corp from connecting to it."
  
  If ABC corp connects to XYZ.RCVR, and XYZ.RCVR has a MCA USer
  Identifier set to 'xyz', then all the messages coming across this
  channelwill have xyz, even ABC's messages. How is that different
  than if the ABC got to XYZ.RCVR through another listner / port? If ABC
  connects XYZ.RCVR overport , where a listener is running as def,
  aren't the messages still put as xyz, not def, xyz is in the
  MCAUSER?
  
  
  
  
  
  Also, you mentioned "we also delete all SYSTEM.DEF* objects". I
  tried deleting SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE on a dummy QM, and now I cant
  create any queues, which I suppose is the goal. But does that meaning that
  from this point forward, I can never create any more local queues on this
  QM?
  
  
  
  
-Original Message-From: Wyatt, T. Rob
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, September
05, 2003 4:44 PMTo:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: Penetrating an outbound
firewall
Peter,

I've not used MQIPT so I don't know what security concerns it
addresses - or introduces. Since I work for a bank, I always start
with the assumption that my DMZ servers are targets of attack and
Itry to nail them down as tight as possible. In my shop we
would do that last paragraph regardless of any assumed security provided
by MQIPT, our firewall or private circuits. 

And that's just the beginning. In the DMZ we also delete
all SYSTEM.DEF* objects, set up LOCALADDR to bind the internal-facing
channels to internal-facing NICs and run security exits (or SSL where
available). We also never use a SVR channel in the DMZ or define a
SVRCONN for external use. As a rule, the Command Server and
Trigger Monitor are turned off unless specifically required. If we
do run a trigger monitor, itruns under a low-privileged ID.
All channels use MCAUSER set to a low-privileged ID. The QMgr runs
under an ID other than mqm and mqm is removed from the mqm group.
UserIDs in the DMZ are never authorized to SET*. All of these
configurations address one or more specific vulnerabilities and when you
apply all of them in combination, it is VERY difficult to get admin
access to the QMgr from outside or to hijack queues and channels for
other than their intended use.

Incidentally, you mentioned a dedicated QMgr "for outbound
messaging (to other companies)" and I notice that's plural. Are
you hosting interfaces tomore than one company on the same
QMgr? In that case, I would DEFINITELY want to lock down each
interface under a separate ID. Can you imagine the 

Building an API exit on Solaris

2003-10-15 Thread Antony Boggis
I am trying to get MQ to run my API exit, written in C++ (it's a hacked version of the 
sample amqsaxe0.c). It works fine under Windows.

I am using the following to build the .so file:

CC -mt mqAPIExit.cpp -G -o mqAPIExit.so -lmqmzf -lmqm -lmqmcs -lmqmzse

and no errors are generated, and the output is generated.

I have added the following to qm.ini:

ApiExitLocal:
   Sequence=100
   Function=EntryPoint
   Module=/var/mqm/exits/mqAPIExit.so
   Name=mqAPIExit
   Data=16

But when I try to start the qmgr I get the following:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/mqm/trace]$ strmqm TEST
AMQ7214: The module '/var/mqm/exits/mqAPIExit.so' for Api Exit 'mqAPIExit'
could not be loaded for reason xecU_S_LOAD_FAILED.

I have tried running an early trace, but all the trace files give me is the same 
return code info, so I am suspecting that my build is not good.

Any help/comments appreciated,

Regards,

tonyB.

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Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed

2003-10-15 Thread Jim Ford
There's SRDF involved here too. What was the problem?

I think I will take your advice and write a tiny C program like you
recommend. We could probably find one of our non-MQ applications that
encountered the problem. But all of our applications will have something
besides basic file access involved, like network, Oracle, etc. The SAN
people would be sure to use that as an excuse to not take over the problem.

Simpler is better.




  Pavel Tolkachev
  pavel.tolkachev@To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  DB.COM  cc:
  Sent by: MQSeriesSubject:  Re: MQ Problem - Advice 
Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  N.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 03:47
  PM
  Please respond to
  MQSeries List






I had a similar problem. It was even harder to detect because the
bottleneck that time was SRDF link and iowait does not show  you anything
meaningful when all these low level buffers are full. To investigate, it
took writing a very simple C application. In pseudocode:

1. In a tight loop forever
1.0. print write started + timestamp.
1.1.   Write 100M of some garbage (it better to be random) into file A.
1.2. Close file A
1.3. Delete file A
1.4. Output write finished + timestamp.

Then capture the output for a period of 24 hours and find out if this
simple program gives you same problems (like 2-minute delays). If your
description is correct, it will. Then give it to your storage team and ask
them for a cure. No MQ involved.

Hopefully this will help,
Pavel









  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
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  M   cc:
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Advice Needed
  List
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  n.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 03:56
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  MQSeries List






That would be a solution. It seems unnecessary for me to have to do any
further legwork on this, just to get them to take ownership of something
that's so obviously their problem.

Maybe I just need to vent. Arrrgh!!! There. That's better.




  Thomas, Don
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
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Advice Needed
  List
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  N.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:30
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Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well, don't do that anymore.

But seriously, try to find other applications that are experiencing these
pause also, then they would look rather foolish asking everyone to defend
their apps. It's pretty apparent that whatever they are doing is hogging
all
of the disk i/o, and the MQPUT is definitely a disk intensive operation.

Don Thomas
EDS - PASC
* Phone: +01-412-893-1659
 Fax: 412-893-1844
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



-Original Message-
From: Jim Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 3:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MQ Problem - Advice Needed


Actually, they agreed to do that. The pauses stopped. But they can't see
where it can be their fault, though, so now I'm required to defend MQSeries
in general, and MQPUT in particular.




  Rick Tsujimoto
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  .CANON.COMcc:
  Sent by: MQSeries List Subject:  Re: MQ
Problem - Advice Needed
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


  10/15/2003 02:08 PM
  Please respond to MQSeries
  List






Jim,

If they're willing, have them turn off replication.  Show them the audit
numbers from your apps.  Turn on replication and show them the audit
numbers again.




  Jim Ford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  OM  cc:
  Sent by: Subject: MQ Problem -
Advice Needed
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  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  en.AC.AT


  10/15/2003 02:34
  PM
  Please respond
  to MQSeries List





We have periodic pauses on some of our Solaris servers. CPU usage drops
down to nothing for a couple of minutes, then things begin to function
normally 

Clustering not working

2003-10-15 Thread Sid . Young
Howdy all,

I am trying to get two linux MQ server working as a cluster but I am having
odd rersults

The 2 machines are called MQMDEV and QMLMQM2 and both are full repositories,
the cluster is called MQLINK.

I have two channels defined between the two machines:

on MQMDEV
define channel(LINK_TO_MQMDEV) chltype(CLUSRCVR) trptype(TCP)
conname(mqmdev.qml.com.au) cluster(MQLINK)
define channel(LINK_TO_QMLMQM2) chltype(CLUSSDR) trptype(TCP)
conname(qmlmqm2.qml.com.au) cluster(MQLINK)


on QMLMQM2
define channel(LINK_TO_QMLMQM2) chltype(CLUSRCVR) trptype(TCP)
conname(qmlmqm2.qml.com.au) cluster(MQLINK)
define channel(LINK_TO_MQMDEV)  chltype(CLUSSDR)  trptype(TCP)
conname(mqmdev.qml.com.au) cluster(MQLINK)

I have a SRVCONN channel called qml on each.

I have 2 test queues: sid.test.queue on QMLMQM2 and sid.test.dev on MQMDEV
(both have MQLINK in the cluster name)


Now

When I open up a client session on a Win2K workstation with a server
connection channel to each machine and get and put from the queue hosted on
the machine I can get and put without error.

If I put to a queue hosted on the other machine I get the following:

C:\MQClient\binset MQSERVER=qml/TCP/qmlmqm2.qml.com.au
C:\MQClient\binamqsputc sid.test.dev
Sample AMQSPUT0 start
target queue is sid.test.dev
MQOPEN ended with reason code 2085
unable to open queue for output
Sample AMQSPUT0 end

Any thoughts anyoneplease!

Sid Young

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