Service tools user IDs were introduced in V5R3. With this change, you were required to sign in with the service tool user ID to access service functions. Service functions —whether accessed via Dedicated Service Tools (DST) from the system control panel, the System Service Tools via the STRSST command or the disk management tasks through Navigator for i —required you to enter the service tools user ID and password. Service tools user IDs are not related to IBM i user profiles. In the 6.1 release, an enhancement was made to associate a service tools User ID with a user profile. Additionally, you can now display service tools user ID information without going into SST or DST.
Associating a service tools user ID with an IBM i user profile allows the user profile to have the privileges of the service tools user ID. This association can be done in either SST or DST; when you’re working with service tools user IDs, option, 9, lets you link or unlink the service tools user ID with an operating system user profile.
In addition to linking service tools user IDs with user profiles, a new command was added in 6.1 that lets you display service tools user IDs and their status and privileges without going into DST or SST. This command is Display SST User ID (DSPSSTUSR).
Navigator for i disk management tasks don’t require you to sign into the service tools function. Rather, when using the Web console, you must have a service tools user ID with the same name as the user profile name, and the passwords must match; this requirement allows for implicit linking of the user IDs and you don’t have to explicitly link them in SST or DST. Additionally, the level of encryption used for the service tools user ID’s passwords must be set to use SHA encryption. The Enabling and accessing disk units section has the detailed configuration procedures to set up the necessary authorizations required to use the disk management tasks from the Web console.
To learn more about service tools in general, including service tools user IDs and service tools security policies, go to the Service tools topic in the Knowledge Center.
Since the original publication of this article, support for Service tools user IDs has been enhanced, most significantly in the 7.4 release. The Service Tools What’s New for 7.4 section summarizes these enhancements.
This blog post was edited for currency on January 29, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.