Automatic switch to Zos from OMVS when external user connect

[LeonBylsma]

Is there any way in which we can automatically point a user to the Zos directories instead of OMVS when they connect to the mainframe? The reason is that we have clients that have SSH software imbedded in other applications, where they can not issue custom commands e.g. they can not do "cd //USERID' to get to Zos. They can only do 'cd USERID' which is a standard SSH ftp client command. We do not allow sftp clients to place files or get files in OMVS, instead they need to switch to Zos with the 'cd //USERID'. This means that they will need to replace their software with the likes of OpenSSH to allow them to do those commands and in many cases they have to almost rewrite entire applications to achieve this.

[coz]

I'm not sure I completely understand the client restriction you are describing. As we discuss in our documentation, some clients are unable to send a double slash "//", so we accept and alternative dataset space prefix of "/-/" as well. This may address your problem.

In addition, in the latest version of the software (1.3.0), we introduced a new environment variable SFTP_ZOS_INITIAL_DIR that does what you want. Here's the description from the manual:

The SFTP_ZOS_INITIAL_DIR environment variable can be used to override the home directory on the server. By default this is the user's USS home directory. If the string // is supplied, the user's MVS top level qualifier is used. Otherwise an absolute path (USS or MVS dataset space) may be supplied.

See http://www.dovetail.com/docs/sftp/insta ... tomization for more information.