SPARTA News

November 2022

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Randy Springs

Almost winter, and North Carolina weather is up and down with leaves flying. Some are planning last minute vacations to use up remaining days off, and others are working on projects to beat holiday change freezes. I will be happy when every other TV commercial is not a political ad.

This month, we will again be holding our SPARTA meetings via Zoom. With the removal of mask mandates in NC, we can consider going back to our in-person meetings if we can find an appropriate venue. Let us know if you have any suggestions for a meeting location.

For our November meeting, join us for a presentation from Frank Kyne, President of Watson Walker and Todd Havekost, Senior z/OS Performance Consultant for Intellimagic, on the recent z/OS XCF Transport Class Simplification enhancement. Invite your fellow systems programmers to join us for networking and information.

Please join your colleagues online at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 1, on Zoom. Watch for meeting connection information coming your way soon.

Randy Springs
Retired (Truist)

Future Speakers (subject to change)

November 1, 2022 - z/OS XCF Transport Class Simplification by Frank Kyne of Watson Walker and Todd Havekost of Intellimagic

December 6, 2022 - TBA by TBD

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2022-2023 SPARTA

Board of Directors

Randy Springs - President

Retired (Truist)                  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Raleigh, NC 27604

Ron Pimblett - Vice President

MDI Data Systems

Land line 613 599 6970

Mobile 613 981 6919

190 Guelph Private

Kanata, ON K2T 0J7

Chris Blackshire - Secretary

Retired (Dell, Perot Systems, Nortel)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Durham, NC 27713

Randy Springs - (Acting) Treasurer

Retired (Truist)                  (919) nnn-nnnn

see Randy

Springs earlier

Ed Webb -  Communications Director

Retired (SAS Institute Inc.)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Apex, NC 27523

Mike Lockey -  Web Master

Guilford Co. Information Services  336-641-6235

201 N. Eugene St.

Greensboro, NC 27401

Meetings

Coronavirus Change: All meetings for the foreseeable future will be held online at 7 p.m. via the Zoom App. The link to meeting is sent to SPARTA Mailing list within 24 hours of the meeting time for security reasons. Stay safe.

Meetings are scheduled for the first Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in January), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building (1912 T.W. Alexander Drive). In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

August 2022 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V504 (dated August 16, 2022) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Ed Webb (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the October 4, 2022 Meeting

• The meeting was canceled about 5:50 PM via e-mail by the SPARTA board because of Presenter issues.

• Call For Articles: Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

• The SPARTA Web page is available at this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

• 2022 meeting dates, Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

• The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be held virtually on Tuesday, November 1, 2022.

• The October 4, 2022 monthly meeting was cancelled about 5:50 P.M.

Treasurer’s Report for October 2022

contributed by Randy Springs

The balance in the account is $994.51 as of October 31, 2022.

SPARTA Financial Report
10/01/2022 through 10/31/2022

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2022

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Nov 1, 2022 - Subs
Dec 6, 2022 - BarBQ

SHARE Provides Details about Atlanta 2023

contributed By Ed Webb

On October 27, 2022, SHARE opened its Atlanta 2023 event page.
Registration fees are lower than Columbus because of the shorter SHARE week. The fees are slightly more than Dallas which was a similar length.

The hotel will be:

"Hyatt Regency Atlanta
265 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Phone: 404.577.1234

SHARE room block rate: $250 + tax "

The SHARE Atlanta 2023 website shows "coming soon" about registration, hotel reservations, and such.

Corrupted REXX execs on z/OS Tools and Toys can cause system outage

contributed By Ed Webb

Who knew REXX was so powerful?

"Abstract
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED if REXX execs downloaded from z/OS Tools and Toys site between 6 January 2021 and 19 October 2022
Content
The REXX execs on z/OS Tools and Toys were updated on 6 January 2021 to include license text within the header. An extraneous '*' was added between the '/' and 'REXX' keyword on the first line of the REXX execs, as follows:

/** REXX **************************************************************
The extra '*' causes these sample REXX execs to recursively spawn new processes when executed from the OMVS shell under a superuser (UID 0 user), which might result in a system outage due to the exhaustion of system address spaces (MAXUSER parameter in IEASYSxx PARMLIB member)."

IBM's support article has a few more details.

IBM z/OS Enhancements via the Service Stream

contributed By Ed Webb

Here's a couple of z/OS APARs of interest.

Add RTM and SLIP infrastructure support for future function.
z/OS APAR OA61760 (PTFs UJ09450 or UJ09451) for FMIDs 7C0 and later lays the groundwork for Integrity Monitor Event recording, an upcoming facility for z/OS.
Read the details at IBM Support.

z/OSMF IBM Server Cleanup.
z/OS APAR PH47683 (PTFs UI82940 or UI82941) for FMIDs 7C0 and later cleans up unsecured IBM servers from FTP and Incident Log.

1.Incident Log will no longer display unsecured IBM provided FTP servers.
2.Anonymous approach for IBM servers are disabled in Incident Log. Authenticated log in with an IBM Support File Transfer ID and password (token) will be required to send diagnostic data to testcase and ecurep servers.
3.Support for retrieving CEEOPTS DD statement and HTTPs keyring from PDUU with HTTPS server definitions.
4.Support for retrieving proxy settings for PDUU with HTTPS from the PDUU-HTTPS profile.

Read the details at IBM Support.

Raleigh Software Company Red Hat Delivers Again for Parent IBM

Contributed by Chris Blackshire

"In 2019, IBM purchased the Raleigh open-source software giant Red Hat for the handsome sum of $34 billion. The parent company, known as Big Blue, hasn’t seemed to regret adding something red.

Red Hat revenue grew 18% in the third quarter of 2022, which ran from July to September, IBM reported Wednesday. This continues a streak of Red Hat revenue increasing at least 15% every fiscal quarter since the acquisition.

IBM reported 15% revenue growth overall, beating expectations. Yet even when IBM’s overall growth has stalled or decreased in recent quarters, Red Hat has been a consistent producer.

Addressing investors Wednesday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna repeatedly touted Red Hat’s performance driving the larger company’s growth in software and consulting.

“With our enterprise incumbency and global scale, we continue to see an increase in large deals, as well as strong cross-sell and up-sell across Red Hat solutions,” he said.

Founded in 1993, Red Hat is considered one of the world’s leading open-source software companies. While anyone can freely access its open-source software, the company sells subscriptions for consulting and security services.

Red Hat employs more than 2,000 people at its downtown Raleigh headquarters. Its sale to IBM was the largest software acquisition in history.

In the deal, IBM promised to respect Red Hat’s neutrality by not interfering with its open-source model and to allow Red Hat to sell services to IBM’s competitors."

From the News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, dated October 22, 2022.

Humor

Wit & Wisdom (Returns)

contributed by Ed Webb

Most people are willing to meet each other halfway...but most people are pretty poor judges of distance.
You are only poor when you want more than you have.
The squeaking wheel doesn’t always get the grease; sometimes it gets replaced.

No one is too big to be courteous, but some are too small.
It is easier to build a boy than to mend a man.
A reputation once broken may be repaired, but people will always keep an eye on the spot where the crack was.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

7 p.m.

Location: Online

Information about access to our online meeting will be sent to our e-mail list by Tuesday, November 1.

Free Food before meeting: Your Food at Your Home

Program:

z/OS XCF Transport Class Simplification

Speakers:

Frank Kyne of Watson Walker and Todd Havekost of Intellimagic

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors: