As promised, and update for anyone interested. I did manage to get it working; just a bit differently than I expected.
I had to go through the install a second time, but at the 3rd to last step, where it asked if I want to install a new system, upgrade a system, or other; I selected other, and then chose boot an existing system. It asked me to load a few kernel modules for filesystem support (I accepted whatever ones it asked for), and off it went. So I know how my own fully working z800 :) ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Jim Stefanik <j...@jimstefanik.com> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 17:04 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Need Help IPL'ing Linux on Z Install Oh wow - ok - I feel dumb now. Reading Mark's post over a couple of times, I now understand. Those addresses are locations in RAM where the files get stuffed and tell the CPC where to execute from. I will give this a go over the holiday weekend. I'll post back to let everyone know how it goes! Thanks for the help ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Jim Stefanik <j...@jimstefanik.com> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 15:02 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Need Help IPL'ing Linux on Z Install AH HA! I swore I saw that post in the archives a while ago, but couldn't find it again when I needed it. Does anyone know what the addresses in the ins file signify? Is this a load point of some sort? Are they needed? Do they match between the install DVD and an installed OS? Perhaps Mark will see this and chime in? :) Thanks! ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Tony Harminc <t...@harminc.net> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 14:38 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Need Help IPL'ing Linux on Z Install On 25 May 2017 at 00:43, Tom Brennan <t...@tombrennansoftware.com> wrote: > A bit of a crazy idea, but I've had crazier ones that were implemented: > What if you wrote your own small program, IPLable from DVD or USB (or > whatever is available on the z800), and that program would know (or get) > the subchannel id of your SCSI boot disk, run CCW's to load the SUSE boot > records into low memory, load the PSW, and off you go as if you booted from > SCSI. This was discussed back in December 2015 under the thread "IBM z890 Update". This was also Connor's problem, and yours was also my suggested solution. But it appears there is another solution explained by Mark Post back then. He said: ============ And this is the point I was going to make. The install process starts with the "Load from Removable Media or Server." That media can be a DVD in the HMC, or an FTP server somewhere on the network. The HMC looks for files that end with "*.ins" and displays the list of them on the HMC. Each of those files contains a list of _other_ files that are to be loaded into storage, at specified locations, and then executed. The suse.ins file looks like this: boot/s390x/linux 0x00000000 boot/s390x/initrd.off 0x0001040c boot/s390x/initrd.siz 0x00010414 boot/s390x/initrd 0x01000000 boot/s390x/parmfile 0x00010480 What I would recommend is that Connor keep his FTP server updated with whatever kernels, ramdisks, and parmfiles he has installed on his storage array, and use the HMC to boot from them. (These would need to be extracted from disk to the FTP server after every update to the kernel or parameters.) In the parmfile, you can point to where the root file system lives, and the initrd would have the code necessary to activate the SCSI over FCP connection to mount it. It's a bit of a PITA, but should work just fine until such time as he either gets the SCSI IPL feature from IBM installed, or he finds some ECKD storage at a reasonable price. ============ Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
