IMHO the proper response to the question would be "what do you need it for" Exactly. I would say to even ask this question you better be a privileged user. As such, you probably do want to know the logon "status" of the user, e.g. NOLOG. For that, direct examination of the directory or utilization of the facilities of one's security or directory manager would be in order.
________________________________ From: The IBM z/VM Operating System on behalf of Rob van der Heij Sent: Tue 3/16/2010 4:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Check for User... On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Quay, Jonathan (IHG) <[email protected]> wrote: > Is a NOLOG or other "special" user valid? Back in the stone age, PROFS would try a "SPOOL PUN <user>" to see whether the recipient is a valid mailbox. And NOLOG was a common way to de-activate users and leave them on probation for a while. So it makes sense that SPOOL considers NOLOG as "no such user" But if you're trying to see whether a user already exists because you want to add it, then this info is clearly not sufficient. Many installations also use NOLOG to define placeholder users that merely own the disks but never will be logged on. We've also used the check on one of the common user disks (from the directory profile) to differentiate between types of users. And you normally avoid to involve the ESM when you don't need that. IMHO the proper response to the question would be "what do you need it for" since different needs beg for a different approach. I'm rarely happy with a black box tool that does a lot of stuff under the covers when a single CP command can do what you need. Rob
