What I had in mind was to hand off the handling of LOADPARM to
the kernel parm string processing: append a "loadparm=" token
to the parm string, with or without the VM IPL PARM appendage.
(That is, PARM (VM only) and LOADPARM (VM also) would
operate independently of each other.)
This does several things:
1) gives us immediate availability of LOADPARM handling
without changes to ZIPL (or IPL from tape or RDR)
2) gives the non-VM Linux folks something
where up to now they've had nothing
3) does not say ZIPL cannot intercept LOADPARM
4) does not say that we can't have an HMC prompt
At this stage, we could leave the door open for ZIPL
or other boot loaders to intercept LOADPARM and do things like the
"slot handling" y'all have suggested. I'm just saying that in the
absense of that, there should be a "loadparm=" appended
if LOADPARM were specified.
And remember to support common code! For example,
the installers might use loadparm= by translating that
limitted string into something more meaningful before jumping
into sections that are the same for zSeries, INTeL, etc.
-- RMT
