Question

Mainframe Password Reset

Asked by: hfcsp

Does anyone know how I might be able to reset a mainframe password from WIndows?  Basically I would like to write some sort of PHP, HTML, VB application that would allow a user to reset their mainframe password....  Is this possible?

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Asked On
2007-05-23 at 05:02:29ID22589652
Tags

mainframe

,

password

,

reset

Topic

MainFrame Operating Systems

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: giltjrPosted on 2007-05-23 at 18:32:57ID: 19146226

Technically it is possible, but your mainframe security group would need to allow it.

I am assuming you are talking about one of IBM's mainframe OS's, such as z/OS, z/VM, or z/VSE.

Under which situation do you want to reset the password:

     User forgot their current password, but their ID is still active?
     User forgot their current password and their ID has been revoked?

 

by: hfcspPosted on 2007-05-24 at 04:20:18ID: 19148258

Only if their account is still active.  If they are "locked out" they will have to contact our datacenter operators to have their account unlocked...

 

by: giltjrPosted on 2007-05-24 at 08:29:04ID: 19150038

Your mainframe security group would need to provide you with a userid and password that has either system special or group special for the specific groups that contain the users you want to be able to change the passwords for.

Then you would need to "logon" to the mainframe via a 3270 screen scraping and do the password change.

There are some software products that do this, and they do it by either doing 3270 screen scraping or by running a a "sever" program on the mainframe and a client program on a distributed box.  The "server" program is a task that is started using the userid I mentioned before.  The client program sends a request to the server program and changes the password.

If your mainframe is running RACF, your mainframe group MAY setup the LDAP server that uses RACF as a backend database and then you can use LDAP calls.  However, you still need to logon to the LDAP server using a userid and password that is authorized to change other users passwords.

Depending on what is setup on your mainframe, you can actually do this from the mainframe with a custom written Perl program using LDAP running under a webserver on the mainframe.

 

by: jimmydPosted on 2007-05-24 at 11:59:38ID: 19151824

There are many system packages that allow you to do this, we use CONTROL/SA from BMC Software.  I guess it would depend on how many users you have and how you want to manage it.  If nothing else a user can always change their own password. but to reset it once it's been revoked for some reason like, too many invalid attempts, forgot the password, or something similer then the management product would be needed

 

by: momi_sabagPosted on 2007-05-26 at 22:50:48ID: 19163628

i know you can change your password by using  a db2 client, which means, you don't need any special user or any special privilige,
you just need to know how to code that service....
i believe that in order to do so , you have to have some kind of stc that runs in the mainframe and waits for connection attempts, when a user connects that stc should use the racroute macro to identify as that user to racf or tss,
once you achived that, you can change the password, just as you would if you connected locally, since your stc runs on the main frame

hope i was clear
momi

 

by: giltjrPosted on 2007-05-27 at 09:46:41ID: 19164671

I guess it depends on what he means by "reset".  Typically in the mainframe world "reset" means I have forgotten my password and it needs to be "reset" to something I know.  If this is what he means, then a special id that has authorization to change somebody else's password must be used.

If he means that the user knows his current password and wants to change it, then that is another situation and does not require a special ID with special permissions.

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