Newbie (linux-z/VM 4.3-linux)

Ricky

Sep 26, 2002

Hallo People,
I'm really uncomfortoble to say that I'm a newbie in this forum. But I
really need help to understand how to install z/VM on my linux box.

We (IBM BP) got a trial (1 year) version of z/VM 4.3 on cd.
Now I would like to install it under my Redhat linux.

My purpose is to install a linux in z/VM.

Does anyone has experience wiht such installation?

I have installed hercules. But I'm not sure now what to do.
Is this folowing raw steps right?:
1. install hercules
2. edit the hercules.cnf
3. creating and formating dasd (3390-3)
- Q: (since I haven't installed any ibcdasdi/ickdsf yet) how can I
format the dasds?
- Q: Should I first load any files from the first z/VM CD? Can I do this
with Hercules?
4. Do the 1st IPL as stated on the "z/VM installation and service
summary" z/VM (step 2)
- Q: is this right?

another questions follow.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Ricky Cahyono

12:34 pm

Re: Newbie (linux-z/VM 4.3-linux)

tonycrossuk

Sep 26, 2002

Ricky,

I'm afraid you will not find anyone here who is prepared to help you
with this since it's unlikely you are legally allowed to run z/VM
under Hercules. Please read Roger Bowler's recent post (number 25466)

Cheers.......Tony Cross

--- In hercules-390@y..., Ricky <iye@g...> wrote:
> Hallo People,
> I'm really uncomfortoble to say that I'm a newbie in this forum.
But I
> really need help to understand how to install z/VM on my linux box.
>
> We (IBM BP) got a trial (1 year) version of z/VM 4.3 on cd.
> Now I would like to install it under my Redhat linux.
>
> My purpose is to install a linux in z/VM.
>
> Does anyone has experience wiht such installation?
>
> I have installed hercules. But I'm not sure now what to do.
> Is this folowing raw steps right?:
> 1. install hercules
> 2. edit the hercules.cnf
> 3. creating and formating dasd (3390-3)
> - Q: (since I haven't installed any ibcdasdi/ickdsf yet) how can I
> format the dasds?
> - Q: Should I first load any files from the first z/VM CD? Can I do
this
> with Hercules?
> 4. Do the 1st IPL as stated on the "z/VM installation and service
> summary" z/VM (step 2)
> - Q: is this right?
>
> another questions follow.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Best regards,
> Ricky Cahyono

9:19 pm

Re: Newbie (linux-z/VM 4.3-linux)

Roger Bowler

Sep 27, 2002

--- In hercules-390@y..., "tonycrossuk" <tonycrossuk@y...> wrote:
> I'm afraid you will not find anyone here who is prepared to
> help you with this since it's unlikely you are legally allowed
> to run z/VM under Hercules. Please read Roger Bowler's recent
> post (number 25466)

Tony, while you rightly raise this matter for attention, I disagree
with your conclusion.

Ricky mentions that he is an IBM business partner with a 1 year trial
version of z/VM on cd. Therefore it is not the ADCD, which is issued
on an indefinite loan basis with systems purchased through IBM
Partnerworld for Developers. It is more likely to be the IBM DemoPak
CD. Although we know that IBM does not permit use of the ADCD on any
emulator other than Flex (see http://etpgw02.dfw.ibm.com/adcd.html),
I understand that the DemoPak does not have this restriction.
However, I have not seen a DemoPak licensing agreement, and I cannot
say what is the situation here. As always, it's up to the user to
validate that what he wants to do falls within the terms of his
licensing agreement.

This is a sensitive issue. I certainly do not want to encourage
software piracy, but at the same time I think we should be careful to
avoid making unjust accusations of piracy at legitimate users.

It might help settle some doubts if users of licensed software could
explain in detail in what way their license terms cover use under
Hercules, although I accept that in some cases this may not be
possible for reasons of business confidentiality.

Roger Bowler

8:17 am

Re: Newbie (linux-z/VM 4.3-linux)

tonycrossuk

Sep 27, 2002

Point taken Roger, sorry for jumping the gun.

It's still unlikely that anyone here will be able to offer help
though, because 99.99999% of us here are not able to run these
licensed programs. Sigh........

Regards..Tony C.

--- In hercules-390@y..., "Roger Bowler" <rogerbowler@y...> wrote:
> --- In hercules-390@y..., "tonycrossuk" <tonycrossuk@y...> wrote:
> > I'm afraid you will not find anyone here who is prepared to
> > help you with this since it's unlikely you are legally allowed
> > to run z/VM under Hercules. Please read Roger Bowler's recent
> > post (number 25466)
>
> Tony, while you rightly raise this matter for attention, I
disagree
> with your conclusion.
>
> Ricky mentions that he is an IBM business partner with a 1 year
trial
> version of z/VM on cd.

2:12 pm

Re: Newbie (linux-z/VM 4.3-linux)

Adam Thornton

Sep 27, 2002

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 02:12:39PM +0000, tonycrossuk wrote:
> It's still unlikely that anyone here will be able to offer help
> though, because 99.99999% of us here are not able to run these
> licensed programs. Sigh........

> > Ricky mentions that he is an IBM business partner with a 1 year
> trial
> > version of z/VM on cd.

It may not be that unlikely that people here can offer help. If you
have a real mainframe running z/VM, then I think you can legally run
z/VM in Hercules. Although you have to do it on the box that's already
running z/VM.

Now, I can only comment on this from the perspective of running z/VM 4.3
under Hercules under Linux/390 under z/VM, and *not* z/VM under Herc on
Intel. I believe, by the terms of *our* license agreement, that z/VM on
Herc on Linux on z/VM is legal, in that it isn't any different--in terms
of the license--than running z/VM second level under itself. I am
assuming--to forestall the argument I smell blowing in the wind--that
running Hercules is not, in and of itself, illegal.

Should your license allow you to do this under Intel, the procedure
should be nearly the same, since Linux is very similar across all
platforms.

What I find very curious is why you got a trial license and CDs for z/VM
if you didn't already have a mainframe to put it on. That seems like a
very strange oversight for IBM to make. If you *do* have a machine that
goes with these, of course just carve out a small LPAR and install z/VM
there because it will be a great deal faster. If IBM has changed its
policy such that they'll lend you the software without any approved
hardware or emulator to run it on, then that's really big news, to say
the least.

There's really no point in doing it under L/390, by the way, other than
to see that it can be done. It costs you about two orders of magnitude
in terms of performance, while a plain old guest machine costs you
something like 5%. The only real reason I can see to do it is to debug
Hercules by finding the bits that don't work in this environment, and
making them work. Which will be slow. I must confess that I haven't
actually done much of anything with the system after bringing it up--I
do, appearances to the contrary, occasionally have real work to do, and
waiting for a glacially slow emulator doesn't help. Yes, it is
significantly more responsive than NT on Bochs on L/390. But that's a
little like saying that chlamydia is better than syphilis.

Let me see if I can remember what needed fixing to run z/VM under
Hercules on L/390. This assumes a Linux 2.4 installation with the
tun/tap drivers installed. I used Debian/390, as it comes with the
right drivers at no cost.

First, you have to patch ctcadapt.c. Make sure you explicitly
initialize seg->unused[0,1] to 0x00 in the section (line 188x, I think)
where the CTC data structure is getting initialized. The declaration
doesn't clear those bytes, and at least the z/VM CTC driver cares.
Also, (if you're running under Linux/390 under z/VM), you need to remove
the bogus test for the S390 platform from ctcadapt.c. There is indeed a
perfectly good tun/tap adapter, so you need to make Hercules just shut
up and do it. That means removing the two lines that look like

(strncmp(utsbuf.machine, "s390", 4) != 0) &&

After that, you'll need two 3390-3 fullpacks, but compressed DASD works
fine (and it had better if you're doing this on a 3390-3-based system!).

Assuming you can make your CDs look like emulated tapes--which shouldn't
be hard--that's what TDF files do, after all--although Hercules seemed
to do some unwanted case conversion on filenames, which required me to
write a little shell script to lowercase all filenames--then you just
mount your tapes at some address (VM is going to want them at 180-18F,
eventually, but by the time it does, you're already running VM so you
can remap them), IPL from the tape, run standalone ICKDSF as the first
thing it loads to format your DASD. Then IPL from the tape again to get
the starter system up.

At this point, you just install VM. There's only one more gotcha I
remember: VM doesn't want to install from a 3480 and Hercules doesn't
know about 3422s. However, the bit that checks the device is just part
of a Rexx file--somethingorother PANEL on, um, maybe disk B?--and it's
easy enough to fake it out so that 3480 is also an acceptable choice.

At this point, you just install z/VM as usual.

Now, my experience was that VM was quite unstable running under Herc
under L/390. Once the H70 is done having its IO config changed and a
reboot, I can maybe get some of the messages. I don't know whether
Intel is better-behaved.

That aside, Guest LANS just don't work under Hercules; you can
initialize devices that talk to them, but you basically get a "can't
happen" error message when you try to pass a packet that seems to
indicate that the shared memory block they use wasn't actually
allocated. Maybe this bit needs a microcode assist? Although that
seems weird since real Guest LANS work fine on the H70, which does not
have hardware HiperSockets support, and is not running a QDIO OSA
adapter in real life. I dunno. As I said, I haven't played with it in
much depth.

Adam
--
adam@...
"My eyes say their prayers to her / Sailors ring her bell / Like a moth
mistakes a light bulb / For the moon and goes to hell." -- Tom Waits

4:00 pm

Is hercules illegal?

Roger Bowler

Sep 29, 2002

Adam Thornton <adam=uX/v2g6dJhCyum0STUha2w@...> wrote in
message news:20020927120022.H18608@....
> assuming--to forestall the argument I smell blowing in the wind--that
> running Hercules is not, in and of itself, illegal.

Great note from Adam, but I'd just like to pick up on the use of the word
"illegal" here.

One vociferous opponent of Hercules (guess) has been putting around the
story that Hercules is "illegal", and has even gone so far as to suggest
that anyone using it risks being thrown in jail!

Let us be clear on one thing. Hercules is not "illegal".
No-one is committing any crime simply by using Hercules.
So what's this all about?

The idea arises from the hypothesis that Hercules might infringe some
patents held by IBM. The argument goes something like this:
IBM is believed to hold patents which relate to certain mechanisms
implemented in the ESA/390 instruction set. Hercules implements this
instruction set, and therefore (it is alleged) it must infringe IBM patents.
Ergo, Hercules is "illegal".

There are several large non-sequiturs in this argument.
Firstly, nobody has actually come up with any specific patent which Hercules
is alleged to infringe.
Secondly, the fact that a patent exists does not mean that it is
even valid, let alone that it applies to any specific case. The validity and
applicability of a patent can only be decided by a court. Before that can
happen, the patent holder has to bring a suit against an alleged infringer.
Thirdly, even if Hercules were judged to be infringing a patent, this does
not make Hercules "illegal". A patent gives the patent holder the right to
force someone making an infringing product to pay a license fee, to change
the product so that it does not infringe, or to stop making the product
altogether. It does not make the product "illegal". The word "illegal"
describes something which is contrary to the criminal law. The patent
system is a part of the civil law.

Large companies such as IBM hold thousands upon thousands of patents. It is
quite likely that any reasonably complex device nowadays contains technology
which might be covered by another company's patent.

Is it "illegal" to use a Hotpoint washing machine because it might
infringe one of Hoover's patents? Do you risk being put in prison because
your Hoover vacuum cleaner might infringe a Dyson patent? Do you
avoid buying a Ford car, just in case it might contain some technology
patented by General Motors? No. This is an absurd scenario.

Perhaps the well-known British Telecom patent on hyperlinks makes this
message "illegal", in which case you had better stop reading it now.

Remember that the patent system is counter-intuitive, meaning that you
cannot apply common sense to predict its effects. For a dissident view of
the patent system, see the article by Richard Stallman at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html

And some relevant points were made by Glen Herrmannsfeldt in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/message/16275

Roger Bowler

6:36 am