zMan wrote: >If my name were "*Étienne*", would I be able to have that as a TSO userid? >Or would I have to suffer through just "*Etienne*", sans accent aigu?
I'm afraid not; I concur with the other posters. According to "User naming conventions" on page 62 of the "z/OS Security Server RACF Security Administrator's Guide," IBM Publication No. SA23-2289-02 (for z/OS 2.2), a RACF user ID is 1 to 8 characters in length and can consist of any combination of uppercase A through Z, numeric digits 0 through 9, and/or three special characters at hexadecimal positions 5B, 7B, and 7C. These special character codes correspond to $, #, and @ in the United States (shifted 4, 3, and 2 on most U.S. keyboards) but can vary with other terminal/terminal emulation codepages. That's a total of 39 possible characters per user ID character. Sadly, É (uppercase E with an acute accent) is not one of those 39 characters.(*) Here are two more caveats: (a) If you want your RACF ID to be usable within MVS subsystems, the first character cannot be a numeric digit (0 through 9). (b) In addition to the MVS restriction, if you want your RACF ID to be usable within TSO, the user ID cannot be longer than 7 characters. Here are some examples of valid TSO user IDs that you might like (or dislike less): ETIENNE EACCENT ACCENTE E@ACUTE E1ACUTE FRENCHE THEBIGE NOBIGE E4EVER RACF passwords and passphrases, z/OS UNIX System Services UIDs, and the IBM Directory Server for z/OS (the LDAP server, a feature included at no additional charge with base z/OS) have different rules. CA's TopSecret and ACF2 might also have different rules. Rules are potentially subject to change. As an exercise for the reader, try calculating (for z/OS 2.2): 1. The number of compliant, unique RACF user IDs; 2. The number of compliant, unique MVS user IDs; 3. The number of compliant, unique TSO user IDs. For #1, I'm pretty sure that's 39^8+39^7+39^6+39^5+39^4+39^3+39^2+39. For #2 I think it's 29*(39^7+39^6+39^5+39^4+39^3+39^2+39+1). For #3 I think it's #2 minus 29*39^7. Did I get all that right? (*) OK, hypothetically you could create "Étienne's codepage" and assign É to character position 5B, 7B, or 7C. (Or sacrifice an uppercase letter or numeric digit.) Then make sure your codepage is loaded and works wherever needed, for example in a terminal emulator. I'm not recommending this approach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
