I am pretty sure it would take at least a new driver and probably a new
filesystem, akin to CMSFS for a start. But then you get into the area of
security. Without z/OS doing the file access, your z/OS security package
cannot validate any of the linux i/o to each file. Any process on linux
might be able to read all of your z/OS data. If you want to do this in a
controlled linux just for the purpose of coping z/OS data to linux data
and setting the linux uid/gid and permissions properly for each data
file, then you might get by with something as simple as the CMSFS.

I would look at two alternatives. One, push the data from z/OS to linux
with something like Co:Z and then leave all processing of that data in
linux, DON'T bring it back to z/OS all the time. Two, consider
building/buying a custom client/server application, with linux as the
client, requesting some data from z/OS and the server in z/OS validating
each request against your security pacakge before delivering the data.

But again, those alternatives are meant to stay within the scope of a
z/OS security package. If you don't need to bother with the security
package in order to quickly move to linux, then move quickly to linux
bypassing as much security as you can and then stop using the z/OS copy
of the data.

/Tom Kern

-----Original Message-----
From:         Alan Ackerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:      z/Linux access to z/OS DASD

One of my managers told me that since you could make both ECKD (FICON)
and SCSI (FCP) connections to the same IBM Storage subsystem, z/Linux
should be able to read z/OS data off the z/OS volumes, without any
special formatting by z/OS. I asked IBM and they said it couldn't be
done - z/Linux cannot read z/OS data and vice-versa.

Is this correct?

If so, what would it take to make z/Linux able to read z/OS data
directly?  New drivers?  A new file system?  How hard would this be to
write?

I am aware that you can access z/OS data from z/Linux (or any Linux)
over the network via one of:

*       NFS mount
*       Samba mount
*       Co:Z Co-Processing Toolkit

That's not what I am looking for here.  Our objective is to lower z/OS
MIPS by moving workload to z/Linux.  A network "mount" would certainly
cost some z/OS MIPS.  Moving workload to z/Linux without moving data
would save money because IFLs cost less than standard engines and the
software cost of Linux is lower than that of z/OS.

Alan Ackerman
Alan (dot) Ackerman (at) Bank of America (dot) com

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