OSI/MHS Management Programming Manual

Password Server Interfaces
OSI/MHS Management Programming Manual—424824-001
7-7
Error Handling
ZMHS-MAP-PASSW
defines a password. This token is optional. It contains a password supplied by the
password server to be sent to a remote MTA. In responses, this token is only present
if ZMHS-MAP-PASSW-COMMAND.ZVALUE is ZMHS-VAL-PASSW-MTA-
REQUEST or ZMHS-VAL-PASSW-MTA-RESPONSE. The ZMHS-MAP-
PASSW- tokens consists of the following:
ZLENGTH
defines the length of the password.
ZSTRING
defines the password itself.
Programming Considerations
For security purposes, the password server process should check each requester process.
This is done by checking the name of the requester process and its owner. Checking the
requester process could prevent any unwanted processes from gaining information from
the password server process by using the SPI requests.
If the password server receives an SPI command that it does not recognize (such an
unrecognized service or command), then the password server process should reply with
the value of ZMHS-MAP-PASSW-STATUS set to ZMHS-VAL-PASSW-ERROR.
You should design the password server process to reply to the MRP as quickly as
possible. The MRP waits for the reply before continuing processing.
You can use the password server process to impose other restrictions on association
establishment, in addition to password generation.
There is no requirement that the password server process be a NonStop process pair.
The MRP makes no assumptions about the password server process. The MRP makes a
single, immediate retry attempt for any failed communication.
Appendix C, Examples
, contains an example of a password server that uses the MTA
password server programmatic interface.
Error Handling
The MRP issues the previously described commands during association establishment
with a particular adjacent MTA if the use of the MTA bind password server was
configured for that MTA. If no problems occur during communication with the
password server process and no error responses are returned by the server, then
association establishment proceeds normally. This subsection describes what happens if
problems occur.
MRP Error-Handling Actions
The MRP handles errors as shown in Table 7-2.