You shouldn't ever need to know it, there are other ways to do
everything I can think of.

What problem are you having that you need it for?
Maybe I can tell you how to get around it....

My computer is backed up via TSM to my university's central ADSM server.
If I want to do anything which needs more than my own node password
(which I know), I have to raise a support request with them. For
password resets, these are set to something random which is then sent
out on paper arriving a day or two later! Therefore, if I want to be
able to recover files in the event of my machine dying (as I did this
afternoon), it's invaluable to have the node password so that I can use
the -virtualnodename option on another machine to get back my files more
quickly and get back to work.

Similarly, if a machine dies completely, one also has to wait for the
paper password to arrive before being able to get on with doing a bare
metal restore because of course the encrypted password dies with the
machine. Hmm...

Why has this facility (or the MAILPROG equivalent) been removed from
v5.3 and upwards? This seems a useful sort of thing to me.

Thanks,

Chris.