> Hi Dave, > > Guess I better just give in and try the same route. Problem for our > environment is that, in order to install Linux, I had to apply several > microcode > upgrades to our P390, including a new tape driver. But the tape driver > won't > support our cartridge drive it isn't an IBM piece of equipment! It appears > that > to install from tape will require applying the last microcode fix, > installing a > new tape driver, modifying the config.sys and a couple of other files, > creating > the install tape, installing, then backing it all out again. Oh well, > that's what > we get paid the big bucks for, right? ;-) > > Thanks for your response as well. > > Happy Trails, > Jill
Folks with P/390 (or R/390) can IPL the CD-roms directly. P/390 has support for OMA/2 (optical media attach/2) which consists of an *.TDF file which describes the tape datasets (and tape marks/labels etc.) - device driver is AWSOMA, appears to S/390 as a 3420 or 3480 tape. Here's an example *.TDF file from my R/390 (note the Windoze style backslashes). /home/dougie/R390 >cat 390lnx.tdf @TDF \R390\tapes\image_tape.bin UNDEFINED RECSIZE 1024 \R390\tapes\linux.prm TEXT \R390\tapes\initrd_bin.gz UNDEFINED RECSIZE 1024 TM EOT Hopefully, most distros include *.TDF somewhere in their directory structure. (SuSE 7.0 has /suse/image/awsoma*.tdf on CD-1) Regards, Dougie Lawson -- ITS Technical Support SupportLine for IMS, DB2 & Linux
