Any news on s/390 port?

[TheDarb]

I've got a G5 (31 bit) IBM s/390 here at work currently running SuSE for it's Linux guests... And SuSE's release and software versions run far behind the curve for the platform. I was hoping that maybe the s/390 port of gentoo had made enough progress to try out.

I'd need information on how to get started with the installation and what settings would be best for the Guest (ram, vdisk swap, dasd layout and sizes).

My first idea is to create a chroot environment on a separate disk under SuSE and start building it from there... but I'm not sure.

Any help would be appreciated.

*TheDarb

[hernejj]

Darb,

As you may or may not know, the person in charge of porting Gentoo to S/390 (Mike Buzzetti) attends Clarkson University. The completion of this project depends on the setup of the z/800 that Clarkson won from IBM throught their annual Linux Challenge contest. I (Jason Herne) am currently leading the z/800 administration team here at Clarkson. We hope to have the server functional very very early next semester (late August - Early September). Once that is complete, Mike will finish up the porting of Gentoo. This shouldn't take too long, maybe a month or two? Just for the record, the times I've given are speculative and subject to change.

- Jason Herne (hernejj@clarkson.edu)

[plate]

Moved from Hardware & Laptops.

[TheDarb]

As you may or may not know, the person in charge of porting Gentoo to S/390 (Mike Buzzetti) attends Clarkson University. The completion of this project depends on the setup of the z/800 that Clarkson won from IBM throught their annual Linux Challenge contest. I (Jason Herne) am currently leading the z/800 administration team here at Clarkson. We hope to have the server functional very very early next semester (late August - Early September). Once that is complete, Mike will finish up the porting of Gentoo. This shouldn't take too long, maybe a month or two? Just for the record, the times I've given are speculative and subject to change.

Why would he wait for that when IBM provides free access to a Linux guest for those developing free software for the platform?

[hernejj]

I don't know much about what you are talking about but I assume that the type of access is limited. In order to do the work on the port, Mike would need access to a guest he could re-ipl at will. Also I imagine there would be a certain amount of hassle involved with getting this type of access. The decision was made a while ago to just wait for our z/800 as opposed to attempting to find other means of accessing S/390 or Z series hardware.

One thing you should know is that Mike is only porting the Gentoo installation cd to S/390. From there, the Clarkson OpenSource Institute's z/800 team will be attempting to make some/most/all of the packages in the portage tree compile correctly on S/390. It may or may not be as simple as 'emerge x'. We forsee many problems, but only a test will reveal the truth.

If you're really interested, our webpage is at:
http://cosiforge.cosi.clarkson.edu/projects/zserver/

Although most of the work has stopped for this semester, you can check back late September for updates.

[sethrab]

Why wait for a z800 mainframe? See http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules for a System 360/370/390/zArchitechture emulator capable of running linux-390, DOS/VSE, MVS, OS/390, z/OS, etc, all on your local PC.

[TheDarb]

There will need to be installation media for both s390 (31 bit) and s390x (64 bit)... as not everyone has a z-series box yet.

Just use VM to create a 31 bit guest to work in... it can emulate it no problem.

[TheDarb]

Any news on this?

I see that the z server came in, but I don't see any project work going on, at least not at the URL posted here.

Thanks.

[Jimbydamonk]

So, I am again started the gentoo port to S390. I have a small tarball that is basically a stage 1 ( but everything is comipled for the s390).
I execpt to have a semi working beta system by the end of the month.

The problems I have as of right now is the fact that some things have not been accesable to me. The system that I am builing on is a redhat 7.2 system so gcc and glibc are way to old. I just got them updated and rebuild most of the things that gentoo needs. But I am going to install Redhat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ) which was just realeased and has the newest gcc and glibc and all the new binutils and such.
So.. The project has not died and should have some thing to show for by the end of september.

If anyone has any question or comments let me know

Cheers
The monkey

[fconza]

Hello I'm Francois (french penguin),

I have a linux Redhat 7.2 on s390(G5) and I trie to update the box (for lvm, new kernel ....).
I'm interesting to help community for the port of gentoo on this plateforme.

Why I can do ?

Thanks and "Au revoir"

Francois.

[Simba]

I have s390 but with very old suse, so I want really to replace it with another
distribution. I hope there is any good news about gentoo on s390, or maybe debian is also not bad to try.

[pescador]

Hello everybody,

I'm working for a german IBM Business Partner and I'm familiar with the whole Linux for S/390 thing for 3 1/2 years now. Starting with the "marist" Distribution I've used SuSE, RedHat and Debian on S/390 over the years. As I'm personally a gentoo user I'm very interested in a port to S/390. I thought of trying it myself a long time ago but never had the time for it. I noticed this posting some weeks ago and started watching the thread for the progress of the port. I really would like to help porting it but at the moment I've even lesser time. But at least it should be enough to test it on my company's BigBlackBox (G5).

So - how can I help?

Simon

[mccabemt]

Check out #gentoo-zseries

[dweigert]

I had a good time this past friday, up at the IBM Poughkeepsie campus. I got to see a Z9 running Linux and it definitely kicked major butt. I'd love to do an install of Gentoo on such a system.

Dan