OSI/MHS Management Programming Manual

Password Server Interfaces
OSI/MHS Management Programming Manual—424824-001
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Command and Response Tokens
Tokens in Response Buffer
ZMHS-PASSW-STATUS
defines whether the operation was successful. This token is required.
ZVALUE
defines the status. Possible values are:
ZMHS-VAL-PASSW-OK
ZMHS-VAL-PASSW-ERROR
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.
The MS password server is responsible for safely storing (for example, on disk) the
password and, optionally, the OSI address configuration information for each MS APPL
object it is supporting.
When the MS password server is configured, then OSI/MHS does not maintain the
APPL objects password in its user database. This is part of the general security
requirement. The MHS manager puts a NULL password in the user database for APPL
objects that were added or altered using the MS password server. The MS puts a NULL
password in the user database the first time a user binds on when an MS password server
is configured.
When the MS password server is not configured, it is possible that the user database
contains NULL passwords. The NULL passwords would be for those APPLs that were
added or altered or who bound on while the password server was configured. When this
occurs, the MS uses the NULL password configured in the database and this matches
any incoming password.
There is no requirement that the password server process be a NonStop process pair.