Key Function Not Allowed -- MIDRANGE-L

Second day of Al Mac bumbling around on this.

I need to ask someone who is a PC/400 specialist at Central if there is some
place in the PC/400 settings to force some text line at bottom of screens,
like we can do in 400 reports force some text at bottom of all reports
irrespective of the software ... in the early days of our 36 to 400
conversion we were forcing which reality the print outs were coming from
since they were sharing the same printers.

The problem is at work station address LAWDSPKK (prefix means Lawrenceville
Factory & last 2 characters harken to our S/36 ancestry) which I changed last
nite, after everyone gone home, to LAWDSPKS in hopes that the problem is
associated with some BPCS software object connected to work station address.

BPCS has a lot of objects that are named after the work station.
I was looking in them yesterday but did not see anything out of the ordinary.

I did this via RENAME, hoping the problem is not damaged object in IBM config.
I not eager to delete the object because currently our auto config does not
cross over into remote site.

This is a PC in our LAW shipping dept nornally operated by BELINDA.
That PC is connected via twinax emulation to Perle simulation of IBM remote
controller.

DIANE is helping trouble shoot this for me.
Her PC in Production Manager office is connected by Client Access via VPN,
using work station address DSR (her initials) then 4 digits.

Diane signed onto Belinda PC - the problem happened for her.
Belinda signed onto Diane PC - the problem is not happening.
So it is work station hardware or address middleware, not something
associated with Belinda profile.

We had a conversation about dust & paperclips can fall down inside a keyboard
& mess up a key but user not know which one.

Diane unplugged her keyboard & walked it over to Belinda's PC & plugged hers
in there.
She tells me she is seeing that magic phrase on bottom of sign on screen
before even trying to sign on.
So problem is not Belinda keyboard.

Later on a hunch at sign on screen I did F1 & saw the phrase
(You used to be able to do HELP sign-on in OS/400 V3)
but I could not do anything until reset, when it goes away.

I need to ask if reset has any effect for Belinda PC
I pretty sure not, or else they would never have brought this to my attention.

I also will ask if they see copyright notice because my sign-on screen F1
error message obliterates it.

Thursday afternoon when I arrived at work, Belinda was still on board so I
checked her JOBLOG & saw nothing unusual ... I had been hoping to see
something about this in her BPCS program message queues.

I noticed "GO ASSIST" in her job stream & asked about IBM command line
appearance.
"No, it aint there," they said "It is just on BPCS menus, BPCS screens, and
Sign On screen" before BPCS is even in their picture.
They seemed to think the command line "covered up" where the bogus message is
sitting.
What they are doing on command key is a play key concoction.

I also plan to ask how they get from PC to 400.
Is there a play key in that?

===== Initial Story ======
Subj:    Key Function Not Allowed
Date:   08/23/2001 2:22:09 AM Central Daylight Time
From:   MacWheel99@aol.com

I got a new puzzle today.

One of my users, at a PC at a remote site, is getting this message solid on
bottom of every 400 screen
at sign on,
options from menus,
exit a program,
like it is solid regardless of keystrokes.

It is not preventing user from doing their job, but perhaps it is symptomatic
of something going flaky that we need to fix.

It almost sounds to me like a computer virus :-)
Someone pulling my leg is not a current possibility on my radar screen

I would not mind user having some garbage at bottom of screen in lieu of
blank, but I am afraid if we not track this down & nip it in the bud it might
get in the way of legitimate messages.

Only the one user out of 50 users on our 400 has reported this, but I have a
MSG *ALL out just in case, since this went a week before it was brought to my
attention.

Apparently this started while the user's local power user experts on
vacation, but getting a job log from these folks is more than is reasonable
to ask of them.

I checked with HQ user who does the same application function & has similar
hardware setup & that user has had no trouble since printer alignment
flakiness which was months ago.  I have not touched the ERP software involved
in eons.

We did have a consultant visiting about the same time this started to go
haywire & the consultant did install a back door into BPCS, which I have
subsequently taken down, and was using the work station that now is reporting
this weird stuff, but I have confirmed that the back door was installed from
a different work station, so if there are any remnants that I have missed,
that is not explaining this.

I know that back doors are not good business practice, but IT staff are the
only people who could care less about security.  I setup sign ons for
visitors, but then the people showing visitors areound forget that I have
done so.

I did not see anything out of the ordinary in
the user's profile
BPCS job description shared by all users
the work station involved - via WRKCFGSTS & various BPCS objects
our message files & queues

Where else does it make sense for me to look?

I asked them to do some simple tests & report back to me.
a) User with the problem try someone else work station.
b) Some other user sign on at the problem work station
Hopefully this will make it obvious
Is the problem stuck on User-Id
or is it linked to that work address?

They have checked for obvious keyboard stuff like dust clogging up so that
some key is stuck - caps lock - insert
I asked them to check status of keyboard play record keys
& to see if they have one of the interfaces where they can call up picture of
keyboard & see which keys the system thinks are pressed

WRKMSGF *ALL then 5 on some prospective message collection shows massive
volume
I could dump these objects to *OUTFILE then query search for matching text
Is there any simpler way to locate where some error message text comes from?

I have asked them to see if cursor on error message line then F1 F6 elicits
additional information & if there is a little plus sign to the far right on
the "message"

If this was a legitimate error message, it would go away as soon as the user
moves to another program or evan another screen.

Some menus have a message about user security constraints
Many programs have various messages

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)