Absolute Versus Relative Paths

October 12, 2005 Ted Holt

Faithful reader Bobby recently contacted me for help. He was having some trouble copying files between a library and the root file system. Helping him resolve his problem reminded me that the topic of addressing objects in the Integrated File System (IFS) is confusing and deserves to be written about from time to time.

I’ll use a Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command to illustrate the type of problem that Bobby ran into. Pay attention to the TOSTMF parameter, which indicates a stream file (IFS file) into which the data is to be copied.

The first command copies a database

Get to Know Some Powerful CL Commands

October 12, 2005 Bruce Guetzkow

I use CL (and now CLLE) procedures, rather than RPG, to do as much work as I can. It’s usually quicker to write CL than RPG because IBM has given us a great wealth of commands that perform all kinds of activities. Perhaps the most powerful commands are the RTV (Retrieve) commands, which retrieve information about objects (e.g., libraries and files) and non-objects (e.g., jobs and file members) alike. The Retrieve commands can only be used in CL, CLLE, and REXX procedures. Here’s a sampling of some of the data that you can retrieve.

RTVJOBA: Retrieve Job Attributes. This

Admin Alert: Reader Feedback on Limiting Users with *ALLOBJ Authority

October 12, 2005 Joe Hertvik

In a recent column about limiting access to i5/OS job commands, I stated that there is no way to restrict users with all object authority (*ALLOBJ) from accessing any object on an i5/OS (OS/400) system. It turns out that statement is wrong and that there is a technique you can use to limit a user with *ALLOBJ authority from accessing a specific object.

Reader Peter Kemp got the ball rolling on this one by sending me the following email:

“It’s a good idea to grant *ALLOBJ authority to user profiles by inheriting it from a group profile, rather than by