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Status Submitted
Created by Guest
Created on Feb 2, 2026

Expose file ownership (UID/GID) and permissions in dsmc query backup to enable self-service restores

We are using `mmbackup` to back up large IBM Storage Scale (GPFS) file systems that are shared by thousands of users.
Our goal is to offer self-service restores using `dsmc` while ensuring that users can only restore files they have POSIX-Access to.
At the moment, `dsmc query backup` does not expose ownership (`UID`, `GID`) or permissions. 
As a result, it is not possible to reliably enforce ownership-based access control for restores without restoring the file or directory first.

Use Case
Example file on the filesystem:

-rwx------ 1 graf1 cjsc 858952 Feb 22  2022 /p/project1/cjsc/graf1/GPFS-MD-problem/a.ou`

Only the user `graf1` should be allowed to restore this file.
However, when querying the backup with:

dsmc q backup /p/project1/cjsc/graf1/GPFS-MD-problem/a.out -detail

The output does not expose ownership (`UID`, `GID`) or permissions. 
Although the owner information can be found in the TSM-Databases.

Requested Enhancement

  • Provide an option to expose file metadata stored in the database using `dsmc query backup`, specifically: File owner (`UID` / username)
  • Group owner (`GID` / group name)
  • File mode / permissions

Benefits

  • Enables secure self-service restore workflows in multi-user environments
  • Improves transparency and usability of dsmc for large shared filesystems
  • Aligns backup restore capabilities with standard filesystem semantics
Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Feb 2, 2026

    Thanks, that is a very helpful IDEA