Okay, I think I figured out the gist of the problem - a) If I boot up the machine with a debian9 (daily build) kernel using the following comamnd line:
qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-ccw-virtio-2.5 -m 512 -hda linux.disk -device virtio-net-ccw,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 The VM will boot with issues initializing the virtio devices for the disk and the networking...looks to be a regression. b) If I boot up the machine with a debian8 (stable) kernel using the following comamnd line: qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-ccw-virtio-2.5 -m 512 -kernel kernel.debian8 -initrd initrd.debian8 -hda linux.disk -device virtio-net-ccw,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 The VM will boot with no problems, see the virtio hard drive and the networking. This being the Debian8 kernel/initrd environment, netcfg will be an issue down the line, since it would not allow you to proceed with a virtio NIC configure. This will need to be patched with installing the netcfg 1.13 or 1.134 udeb from the repo (1.13 is stable, 1.134 is testing/sid) Then all you conceivably have to do is to patch the dasd-postinst so the machine will allow you to proceed c) Unfortunately, that was not the technique I chose on this install - the command line I used for the initial install was this: qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-virtio -m 512 -kernel kernel.debian9 -initrd initrd.debian9 -drive file=linux.disk,if=none,id=disk0 -device virtio-blk-s390,drive=disk0,id=virtio-disk0 -device virtio-net-s390,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 Note that the peripherals are virtio-blk-s390 and virtio-net-s390 instead of being ccw devices. The install went seemingly well, everything went to /dev/vda1, zipl ran, and after the install was complete the QEMU session completed with no issues. I would assume that I can remove the kernel/initrd parameters on QEMU and it should IPL directly into Debian. HOWEVER, after the install when I tried to run the installed VM, I ran this: qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-virtio -m 512 -drive file=linux.disk,if=none,id=disk0 -device virtio-blk-s390,drive=disk0,id=virtio-disk0 -device virtio-net-s390,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 QEMU starts up, shows up with a blank console and then no discernable suggestion that it did anything. Well, so what I did was to modify the command line to this: qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-ccw-virtio-2.5 -m 512 -hda linux.disk -device virtio-net-ccw,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 Which remarkably enough worked. The console renders the usual Linux boot sequence, and it worked until it tried to mount the root filesystem, in which case it looks like the kernel commandline (/proc/cmdline) expected root=/dev/disk/by-path/ccw-virtio0-part1 However, since the machine booted with ccw peripherals, the disk is now: /dev/disk/by-path/ccw-0.0.0001-part1 (which is a symlink to ../../vda1) This will result in the init process bombing out to an initramfs mini-shell with a failure to find the root. This is a relatively easy fix since all I had to do is to make a symlink: cd /dev/disk/by-path/ ln -s ../../vda1 ccw-virtio0-part1 And then exit the initramfs, in which case the init process re-initializes. This time, the correct rootfs is referenced so init runs to completion and brings up Debian. That being said, I tried to correct the issue by running zipl. However, this time I run into an error: Error: Assume disk_type FBA for virtblk device, but please specify type manually: Virtblk device type not clearly determined. I am not sure how the original Debian install process ran zipl during the initial install, but how would I specify the proper type for zipl? -----Original Message----- From: Philipp Kern [mailto:pk...@debian.org] Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 3:22 AM To: kkwan....@gmail.com Cc: debian-s390@lists.debian.org Subject: RE: specifying virtio block device as root filesystem for Debian S390X install? On 2015-11-04 05:23, Kevin Kwan (Personal) wrote: > If I use the CCW version: > > qemu-system-s390x.exe -machine type=s390-ccw-virtio-2.5 -m 512 -hda > linux.disk -device virtio-net-ccw,netdev=net0 -netdev user,id=net0 -k > en-us -redir tcp:9022::22 > I just use -nographic on Linux and it does the right thing. > Then I'll see a console, followed by some complaints about missing > /sys/bus/ccw/devices/virtio/cutype (sysfs not populating info on the > CCW > bus?) Can you transcribe the actual failure you see? Kind regards Philipp Kern