Attention Users of *SYSTEM State

[Bruce Vining <bvining@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Within two years IBM plans to remove the i5/OS ability to restore system
state programs not digitally signed by IBM. Only programs provided by IBM
will be able to use system state. Any other system state programs will have
to be changed to use supported interfaces accessible from user state.

It is anticipated that some new application programming interfaces will be
needed to allow user state access to some functions that can now be
accessed only from system state. If you find that you need such a new
interface, please send your request to bvining@xxxxxxxxxxx

No guarantee can be made that all requested interfaces will be provided.
However, the sooner your needs are known, the more likely an interface can
be supplied to meet them.

This action is being taken to enable a leap forward in the system's
already-strong reliability and integrity. The highest levels of reliability
and integrity cannot be achieved, even with extensive design and testing,
if unknown code is accessing operating system control blocks and internal
functions. For example, synchronization protocols used for accessing
operating system data structures cannot be effective unless all accessing
code uses those protocols. In addition, system state code that's not part
of the operating system can degrade customer control of objects, because
some functions perform reduced authority checking for system state code.

Thank you for checking your programs very soon if this integrity
enhancement might affect them!