Re: onmode -z question/comment

A few months back, I wrote a C program which can run as a "setuid" program. It is called su-ontape and has been placed in the IIUG software archives (http://www.iiug.org) under database administration utilities. Basically, it lets someone other than informix/root run the ontape utility, so the operations staff can perform backups without having a super-powerful password. It performs a few basic checks then performs a setuid() call to change identity to informix, then invokes ontape. The user never has control of the process after the change in id, and the id reverts to the user as soon as the utility (ontape or onmode) completes. If your DBAs are willing to allow it, you could modify that program to verify ownership of the process, then perform the setuid() call and exec() to "onmode -z xxxx". Check out the program, see if your DBAs are ok with it. If you have any questions about it, email me directly. Mark Collins mcollins@us.dhl.com ========================================================================= onmode -z can only be run by informix/root. In ourcurrent situation, 'security' rules require that we (developers), the people closest to 'the action' cannot become informix or root on the production machines. Occasionally, through the wonders of ODBC, we get hung threads that have data locked. Instead of of simply running onmode -z XXX, we have to track down the DBA to do this. Bitch and moan: Informix should allow owner of thread onmode'ed the session .. like Unix will allow you to kill own process.