On 1/13/10 9:01 AM, "Bonno, Tuco" <t...@cio.sc.gov> wrote: > please allow me to introduce myself. > I am new to this listserver community. > I am an mvs systems programmer w/ about 30 years experience with ibm > mainframe o/s-s (s360 thru z/os), plus about 12 years experience w/ ibm¹s > UnixSystemsServices/OpenEdition, and its related hierarchical file system > (HFS).
The light will come to you, brother. Welcome aboard. > the PURPOSE of the Linux IFL lpar will be to host DB2Connect. > The install is going to be standalone directly into the IFL lpar (the > governmental agency I work for does not wish to spend any money for a Z/VM > license or for anything else connected w/ this op.). Ask your local IBM representative for a z/VM loan. You REALLY REALLY will save lots and lots of pain and suffering by doing this. IBM has ways to do this for zero $$$ for proof-of-concept work if they think it's a good chance of success. It doesn't hurt to ask. > So I¹m also going to > need a FREE distribution of Linux. So far I have discovered about 3 of these > Œfree¹ Linuxes: Centos, Debian, and the one available from the marist.edu . > question: can anyone offer me some advice on which one I should use (please > keep in mind the purpose is to host DB2Connect) ? CentOS is the only one you listed that is reasonably close enough to a supported commercial distribution that it might be comparable (it's functionally equivalent to the same RHEL release number). Debian has (in my opinion) superior package and system management tooling, but is not a supported platform for most commercial software (even though it works fine if you can get the commercial tools to install). We offer support for it and have made many commercial packages work, but if you're new to the game, it's not the right choice. Forget the Marist distribution even exists. It's ancient, unmaintained and also not supported by any commercial software. Both "blessed" commercial distributions (RHEL and SLES) can be downloaded at no charge from the respective company's web sites. You don't get support from the vendor in that mode, but at least you're running something the ISVs admit exists. > question: can anyone recommend any good cookbook manuals to use? on my own, > I¹ve discovered quite a few books out there on the internet, but I would like > to save some time and not have to download each one to check it out Š. There are redbooks available from IBM for RHEL and SLES. Those provide a pretty good cookbook, although they assume z/VM (see above. You *really* don't want to do this in an LPAR. Really.) > question: anyone have any gp (general purpose, across the board) words of > wisdom he/she would care to share? 1) Get a z/VM loan from IBM. LPARs are a huge pain. You'll be really really sorry if you try to do it that way. 2) If you have other Linux machines in your organization, try to get the same version for your mainframe POC. Many many things are the same, and any way you can say "look, mainframe linux isn't different" is a win. 3) Get your networking people involved *early*. They need to know what you're doing and that it's safe to let you do it. 4) You're going to want either layer 2 VSWITCH or layer 2 OSA connectivity for the Linux system. Everything else you're probably going to want to know is likely to be in the redbook. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
