Cross-posted to IBM-MAIN, IBMVM, and Linux-390
It's been what seems like forever coming, but Novell, David Boyes and I are
happy to announce the immediate availability of the SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server 10 SP1 Starter System for IBM System z. To provide an overview of what
the starter system is for, I'll quote from the installation guide:
The SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) Starter System is a pre-built
installatiostuan server for SLES that can be installed on your z/VM system
using CMS tools, eliminating the need for coordinating access to a separate
Linux or Unix system elsewhere on your network and minimizing the impact of
network-based installation on your internal and external networks.
Typically, one of the biggest hassles of trying out mainframe Linux has been
getting access to the installation media from the mainframe. Novell is
providing the starter system, at no cost, to eliminate that hassle, and get you
moving on your SLES10 proof of concept project faster. This will allow you to
spend more time on the part of the project that your business really cares
about: testing the applications you want to run on SLES for System z.
It's important to understand that the starter system is intended to be used
_only_ as an installation server. To again quote from the installation guide:
The starter system image has been highly customized for use as an installation
server for other SLES-based Linux servers running in virtual machines. The
starter system is NOT suitable for general use and you should not attempt to
use it for any other purpose.
Note that the starter system does require having z/VM in-house. Doing it that
way made the whole project much easier to tackle and get out the door in a
reasonable period of time. If you don't already have z/VM, you need to do what
a number of people have been saying for some time now: contact your IBM rep.
and get a no-cost evaluation copy of z/VM. You'll be glad you did, because it
will make your life much easier.
To download the starter system, you need to have a Novell Customer Center
account, just as for any other Novell product. If your organization doesn't
already have an NCC account, it doesn't cost you anything to create one.
(Prior to joining Novell, I created an NCC account, and I didn't get any spam
as a result, so don't let that keep you from signing up.) Just go to
https://secure-www.novell.com/selfreg/jsp/createAccount.jsp
and fill in the form.
Once you have your NCC account and password established, go to
http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=M5V5-w8h2M0~
and click on the proceed to download button. You'll see a list of 12 files.
One of them is a .iso file, which contains all the others. It's not necessary
to download it, but we wanted to make things convenient for anyone that wanted
to actually create a DVD for whatever reason.
Before you download anything, I strongly recommend reading through the
installation guide. It's viewable online, via the view button for Install
instructions. Or, you can download the PDF (or .txt) file to your desktop by
clicking on the download button for s10sp1.pdf, or s10sp1.txt. Hopefully,
everything you'll need to know is contained in that document. We tried to
proof the document and the process as carefully possible, and make it as clear
as possible. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please send them to
me *off-list* and I'll take a look.
For those of you that participated in the little survey that David and I
initiated back in May, thank you. Your comments were very important in
developing the business case for this tool and getting the funding for it
approved. Also thanks to David Boyes and Adam Thornton of Sine Nomine
Associates for doing the heavy lifting on this project. It was completed a lot
faster (and most likely with better results) than if I had tried to do this on
my own.
Mark Post
