Compatibility considerations

Starting with version 8.4, the CCA host library is shared across IBM Z® and non-Z environments.

This means, that there is no longer a suffix z in the version string returned by queries using verbs CSUACFQ or CSUACFV, as it used to be in earlier versions, for example, 8.2.54z20240726. Instead, now there is an f to indicate a FIPS-certified version, or an a indicating a non-FIPS-certified library version.

However, existing applications running at customer systems may still rely on the CSUACFQ or CSUACFV verbs to return the z as indicator character.

For example, openCryptoki versions older than 3.25 rely on verb CSUACFV to return the z. Otherwise, the openCryptoki CCA token is not usable at all. Also, the zkey utility from the s390-tools package relies on verb CSUACFQ using the STATCCA keyword to return the version string containing a z. If this indicator is missing or changed, older versions of zkey are not able to use CCA secure keys.

CCA 8.4 introduces a new environment variable CSU_S390_VERSION. With this environment variable set to y, the CSUACFV and CSUACFQ verbs return the version using a z. CSUACFQ returns this information when using keywords STATCCA and STATCCAE.

If this environment variable is not specified, or set to anything else than y, the verbs return the character that is actually contained in the version string. Users with applications that rely on the indicator being z, must set this variable with the following command:
export CSU_S390_VERSION=y