Impact on users

Failsoft processing affects you in the following ways:

If you are already logged on:
If RACF® is in failsoft mode, those users already on the system continue to have certain access requests validated by RACF. These requests are data-set-related requests or RACROUTE REQUEST=FASTAUTH processing. To continue validating, RACF uses whatever in-memory tables are still valid in addition to routing control to various exits for further processing. RACF can also continue to log access requests, whether it grants them or not.
Note: If the user requests access to a data set and the decision could not be made using a valid internal table, RACF, through failsoft processing, prompts the operator to approve the request.
If you are not logged on:
The only users who can log on to TSO are those who have user IDs in SYS1.UADS and know their UADS password. These users are not known to RACF and RACF prompts the operator each time one of them requests access to a general resource or a data set that does not start with the user's ID. (This occurs because the users had not been verified—no password checking was done by RACROUTE REQUEST=VERIFY.)

If you reactivate RACF, you should have the users log off and log back on so that they can be identified to RACF.