A few profile examples:
MVS.PURGE.MSS
MVS.HALT.TCAM
MVS.RELEASE.TCAM
MVS.HOLD.TCAM
The profiles were approx. 30 years old, but I'm pretty sure the
installation had never had any MSS and possibly no TCAM.
All of the profiles are still documented in ...SDSF manual. It is
interesting, because MVS System Commands does not document such
commands. There are no commands like PURGE or RELEASE or HOLD at all,
not to mention TCAM or MSS.
What's funny, I have found SMF records for some TCAM command. Was it
really used last months? No. It was result of a typo in JES2 command -
missing $ prefix. However system interpreted it as TCAM command,
unfortunately I can't remember which one. I vaguely remain it was "A"
command abbreviation (like F for MODIFY).
BTW: IMHO such obsolete things should be erased at all or documented as
obsolete. Let's imagine appendix in MVS System Commands: Commands no
longer supported. Just brief list.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
W dniu 19.12.2023 o 22:12, Seymour J Metz pisze:
AFAIK TCAM and the 3850 were defunct by the time OPERCMDS came along. The last
I heard, MSS staging drives had to be either 3330 or 3350 in compatibility mode
and TCAM didn't support Y2K.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי
נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Radoslaw
Skorupka <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2023 3:31 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Z/OS Survey - Unusuall system commands
Unusal commands?
Well, it is enough to open both MVS System Commands and JES2 Commands
manuals.
OBEY is not exactly the system command, however it is widely used.
My favourite is QUIESCE.
There are also other commands which I (almost) never use, but I
understand their purpose.
JES2 world is more complex - there are many commands which I vaguely
understand the purpose. And many which I consider really obsolete.
Fun fact: recently I've been cleaning some z/OS installation, RACF
definitions. I've found approx. 400 OPERCMDS profiles. Some of them were
really, really obsolete - like MSS related command, TCAM commands, etc.
What's funny, even not-so-current documentation does not mention such
commands or profiles, but at least few of them are still present in the
system code.
Explanation: MSS - Mass Storage Subsystem. Very interesting tape-disc
device, but withdrawn in early 80's. TCAM - VTAM predecessor. I have no
idea how old it is. I'm pretty sure the OPERCMDS profiles were created
for an installation with neither MSS nor TCAM.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
W dniu 19.12.2023 o 09:12, ITschak Mugzach pisze:
There are some MVS commands that are hard to understand how and why they
were created. What bothers me is the fact that the input of the commands
that modify MVS behavior allows input from private dataset. These are the
first commands I am trying when I do a pentest...
For example:
*SETLOAD* allows on-the-fly change of parmlib concatenation using a dataset
that is not part of the parmlib concatenation itself. for example: SETLOAD
03,PARMLIB,DSN=sys4.relson
TCPCIP *OBEY* command allows specification of TCPIP configuration from a
private library.
How frequent do you use these commands (if ever) and how do you identify
the use (assuming that the commands are protected by your ESM). I wonder
why IBM allows such a scenario.
ITschak
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