IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

[NYCountryGal]

Okay -- I have an old user profile on our system who has private authorities to 588,000+ stream files in the IFS - from various folders. I found this out by downloading PTF SE32507 (for V6R1) (there are some neat, cool tools they make available) - which makes available the command RTVPRVTAUTH in library QSPTLIB. I got all of this information from a PMAR regarding what to do when your SAVSECDTA starts running longer than 30 minutes. Little did I know that the SAVSECDTA should only take from 5-30 minutes. It is running on our system for 2+ hours because one user profile had more than the recommended percentage full.

The IBM software technical document number is 485601472 -- provides you with most of the information you need to understand how to determine if you have a "naughty" user profile...

Which eventually led me to IBM Software Technical Document Number: 333464355 -which tells you what PTF you need to obtain the tool (different PTF #'s depending on what system you are using) - List All Objects Owned by a User and there are several other cool tools I found - I just have to research them now.

Any how ... what I'm trying to understand ... I have these 588,000+ stream files. Can they be deleted or do I need to change the object owner and authorities?

The wonderful thing about the tool -it creates a physical file (two them in fact - one for the objects (display files, menus, programs, msgq's and the like) and one for the IFS objects) and then you can write programs over them. So I'm trying to understand whether I'm writing a program to change the object owner or am I removing the stream file. If it isn't going to hurt us - I'm voting to delete because I would think those 588,000+ stream files are taking up some space on the system and if I can get us back some space - I'd be making some management people really happy.

And myself .... because I now finally have some tools to help me get some really old profiles off the system .... which is especially nice now that we are moving forward with our software conversion.

Thoughts everyone....

Thanks
Roxie

[jamief]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

I guess we should start with what are these stream files?

[DeadManWalks]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

Are any of these files RVI? if so Id give them a call and get their opinion. I am adventurous, id delete the files and see what happens, but then again I am safely in Atlanta.

[NYCountryGal]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

Hi Jamie ---

From the file that was created what I am seeing is .xls, .csv files and image files (we use RVI - Real Vision Imaging to keep a copy of our clients documents) the majority of the files appear to be the image files - which can be TIF's, JPEG's or PDF images and there is the occasional xml file.

I still don't think I have a clear understanding of what a STMF file is. Isn't a STMF file a copy of a file that you are moving from point a to point b and the STMF is like a type of medium to transport that file? In my mind if I am understanding a STMF correctly - its a copy of a file. So therefore since it is a copy, it isn't needed.... but I expect that I am not understanding what it is and so to know what to do with it correctly - I need to understand what they are so I can make the correct decision of what to do with it.

Roxie

[NYCountryGal]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

@DeadMan -- I would say 90% of the files are RVI files -- and guess who the old profile belongs to..... Y O U .....

I was beating my head against the wall a month ago ... I'm making head way but now I'm like STMF files --- there are literally hundreds of thousands of these things on our system. Anyone who manually scanned images into RVI, and I think because the program to move the images from the IFS to the StoreVault is running under your profile - gets a STMF file. I'll check with RVI on them as well to see what they have to say.

Rox

[tomholden]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

...I still don't think I have a clear understanding of what a STMF file is. Isn't a STMF file a copy of a file that you are moving from point a to point b and the STMF is like a type of medium to transport that file? In my mind if I am understanding a STMF correctly - its a copy of a file. So therefore since it is a copy, it isn't needed.... but I expect that I am not understanding what it is and so to know what to do with it correctly - I need to understand what they are so I can make the correct decision of what to do with it.

Roxie

a STMF is a file (and not necessarily a copy...it's just a file) STMFs are generally "PC" type files not HFS files (i.e. PF, LF, etc.) so in short, don't assume that a STMF is a copy it very well could be the original & only copy of that particular file.

[NYCountryGal]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

Hi Tom --

Thank you. I was just finishing reading the definition of a stream file from the IBM site. Now I understand that a STMF is not a copy of a file, so now I wait to hear back from RVI as to whether I can remove the STMF files or whether I have to change the owner and the authorities.

Roxie

[tomholden]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

if you do have to change ownership just use the CHGOWN command...much easier than some of the other options.

[NYCountryGal]

Re: IFS, Private Authorities and STMF files

Well... just got off the phone with RVI a little bit ago and seems we aren't doing everything we need to be doing to keep our RVI system cleaned up. They have some handy dandy tools that I have to run to build a file containing all of the files found in the \image system, and then they have another handy dandy program that you call that checks to see if the file exists already in RVI and if it does - it wacks the file.

And they do store a lot of images and spool files as STMF files temporarily and then they should be deleted based on parameters we set. Turns out not all of our flags were set correctly for deletion which explains why we still have stuff from '05 through '10 in our image folder. Any remaining STMF files that are left - should not be deleted - the RVI system will take care of them as long as we have the RVI system set correctly and the ownership and authority needs to be changed on all the remaining STMF files and I should no longer have an issue.

The majority of the STMF files are from 2010 and before, so once I run these programs those STMF will be removed and my issue finally goes away.

My brain is bursting .... learned a whole lot of new stuff I didn't know previously and I've attached information on the RTVPRVAUTH tool and information on IFS tools that it talked about. If I use anything in the IFS tools attachment I'm going to be extremely careful ... but I don't think I am.

Thanks for the help!

Roxie

Private Authority List Tool.pdfIFS Tools.pdf