June 17, 2003

RACF Warning Messages May Appear

One of the major changes South system users will encounter in the transition to Titan is that all data sets on Titan are protected by RACF. Currently, few users on the South system take advantage of the data protection offered by RACF.

Since December, 2001, the NIH Computer Center has recommended that South system users prepare for Titan's RACF environment by creating a high-level RACF profile of the form aaaaiii.**. High-level profiles protect all data sets not already protected by a more specific profile. So far, few users have followed this recommendation.

High Level Profiles in Warning Mode

In an effort to nudge users along, the Computer Center will begin setting up high-level profiles in warning mode for users. RACF profiles in warning mode should not cause any problems for users—that is, no jobs will fail because of restricted access to a data set. The profiles created by the Computer Center will be set to be READ-only.

If you access data belonging to someone who has a RACF profile set to warning mode, you may see warning messages in your JES2 Job Logs. The messages will look something like the following:

14.59.45 JOB02928 ICH408I USER(iii ) GROUP(aaaaiii     ) NAME(iii       )
        bbbbjjj.NEW.TEST.DATA CL(DATASET ) VOL(DSA132)
        WARNING: INSUFFICIENT AUTHORITY - TEMPORARY ACCESS ALLOWED
            FROM bbbbjjj.NEW.** (G)
        ACCESS INTENT(UPDATE ) ACCESS ALLOWED(READ )

The warning message indicates that if the RACF profile had not been in warning mode, your job would have failed. Since the profile was in warning mode, your job was allowed to continue.

In the example above, you—user iii—are trying to access a data set named bbbbjjj.NEW.TEST.DATA belonging to another user, jjj. User jjj has specified that other users may only READ this data, and you are attempting to update it. In this case, user jjj needs to make changes to their profile to allow you to access the data set in question before moving to Titan.

The warning message may appear in both batch jobs and during interactive sessions in TSO.

If you receive any messages like this and you are unsure of what to do to correct the problem, please call TASC at (301) 594-6248 for assistance.