Reader Feedback and Insights: Security Flaws

September 11, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

The Validating a User Password sample program in the August 21 issue of Midrange Guru, OS/400 Edition, has some basic security flaws. As you said, the Check Password (CHKPWD) command can produce any of three messages (CPF2362, CPF2363, and CPF2364). The problem is that the program only monitors for one of those messages. The program works correctly for the CPF2362 message but it fails for the other two. When it gets either of these two error messages (because the user has intentionally given a bad password several times in a row) the program will function check

Excuse Me…Can You Hold this Secondary Partition While I Upgrade the Primary?

September 11, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Joe:

I have an iSeries box with two logical partitions (LPARs) running OS/400 V4R5. Our shop needs to upgrade the primary partition to OS/400 V5R1, and we want to put the secondary partition on hold while the upgrade is occurring (we don’t want the secondary to IPL every time we have to IPL the primary). How do I shut down the secondary partition and keep it down while I’m doing the upgrade?

— Ralph

This is a common situation with OS/400 partitions, and many people have configured OS/400 partitions exactly the way you describe in your setup. When you

Adding Subprocedures to a Service Program, Revisited

September 11, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

Regarding your article, “Adding Subprocedures to a Service Program,” there’s a question I’ve always wondered about.

Why is the *CURRENT/*PRV way of handling new exports, such as this example:

STRPGMEXP PGMLVL(*CURRENT)
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONEMORETHAN')
EXPORT SYMBOL('TWICE')
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONETHIRDOF')
ENDPGMEXP
STRPGMEXP PGMLVL(*PRV)
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONEMORETHAN')
EXPORT SYMBOL('TWICE')
ENDPGMEXP
STRPGMEXP PGMLVL(*PRV)
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONEMORETHAN')
ENDPGMEXP

so popular compared to the hard-coded signature method, where you only keep one export list, as shown in this example:

STRPGMEXP PGMLVL(*CURRENT) SIGNATURE("MATH")
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONEMORETHAN')
EXPORT SYMBOL('TWICE')
EXPORT SYMBOL('ONETHIRDOF')
ENDPGMEXP

You have to keep the exports in the same order and add news ones at the