On Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:45:37 -0400 (EDT), anandhcoe wrote: > > Thanks for your reply.. I have downloaded three iso images of Debian > Linux as debian-505-s390-CD-1.iso, debian-505-s390-CD-2.iso and > debian-505-s390-CD-3.iso !! Then i downloaded the booting files likes > initrd, parmfile.debian, debian.exec and kernel!!!! I have created a Z/VM > image over which i am going to install Debian Linux!!! Thereby i have > transferred all the bootable files to the Z/VM... I don no to proceed > further... Could you pls help on this... > > Which file is used as bootable and how to do that....
If you're installing the Debian GNU/Linux s390 port in a virtual machine under z/VM, you don't need any CD images. Do you have any experience running any other Linux distributions under z/VM? If so, your experience in setting up network connections will be valuable. If not, let me tell you in advance that getting the network connections to work is the hardest part of setting up a Linux virtual machine under z/VM. A working network connection is a *requirement* for a virtual machine installation: it is not optional. If you don't have any previous experience installing any Linux distribution under z/VM, I suggest that you read the IBM publication "Getting Started with Linux on System z", SC24-6096. The preferred network connection is a virtual switch. See the IBM publications for details. Depending on which release of z/VM you are running, it may be important to have MACHINE ESA in the virtual machine's directory entry, as opposed to, say, MACHINE XA On some releases of z/VM, a virtual machine with "MACHINE XA" in its directory entry *cannot* be switched into z/Architecture mode during execution, whereas a virtual machine with "MACHINE ESA" in its directory entry *can* be switched into z/Architecture mode during execution. The newer kernels do switch into z/Architecture mode very soon after booting; so if your virtual machine can't make the switch, you will be "dead in the water". I believe newer releases of z/VM treat "MACHINE XA" as an alias for "MACHINE ESA", but it's best to use "MACHINE ESA". Also, make sure your virtual machine has enough virtual storage. I usually use about 512M for installs, which should be plenty. I adjust the virtual storage size later as needed, depending on workload. The first step is to download the newest installation images you can find. The last time I tried to use the production Squeeze installer, it wouldn't even boot. In fairness, that was several months ago; so maybe that problem has been fixed since then; but in my experience the newer the installation image, the more likely it is to work. (By the way, I'm assuming that you want to install Squeeze. I wouldn't mess with Lenny at this late date. Squeeze is already frozen, and will become the stable release soon.) The latest installation images used to be located here: http://people.debian.org/~fjp/d-i/s390/images/daily/ These images were built on Frans Pop's personal web space on people.debian.org. But sadly, due to Frans' recent death, these images are no longer available; and we must look elsewhere. Logon to the Linux virtual machine and IPL CMS. If you don't have the FTP client files on the Y disk, LINK and ACCESS the TCP/IP client disk LINK TCPMAINT 592 592 RR ACCESS 592 E Now, FTP to your favorite Debian mirror. For example, ftp carroll.aset.psu.edu anonymous you...@yourdomain passive cd /pub/linux/distributions/debian cd dists/sid/main/installer-s390/current/images/generic ascii get debian.exec DEBIAN.EXEC get parmfile.debian PARMFILE.DEBIAN binary f 80 get initrd.debian INITRD.DEBIAN get kernel.debian KERNEL.DEBIAN close quit Obviously, make sure that the virtual machine (I'll call it DEBIAN1) has enough space on its "A" disk to download these files. Notice that we went to the "sid" distribution, not the "squeeze" distribution, to download the installer files. These are the latest images that I can find at the moment. Sometimes you can find images under "experimental" in addition to "sid". The "experimental" images, if they exist, are generally newer than the "sid" images, but right now they don't exist. Now we need to do some post-processing. If you used the binary f 80 command in the FTP client, as shown above, the "INITRD DEBIAN A" file and the "KERNEL DEBIAN A" file should be OK. They will be fixed-length, 80-byte files, padded with binary zeros as necessary to make the last record exactly 80 bytes long. That's what they need to be, since we are going to IPL from a virtual card reader. But the "DEBIAN EXEC A" file and the "PARMFILE DEBIAN A" file need some work. By virtue of being downloaded under the "ascii" protocol, as shown above, a translation was made between ASCII and EBCDIC during download. But the files are not in the final format that they need to be in. PIPE < DEBIAN EXEC A|JOIN *|SPLIT AT X25|> DEBIAN1 EXEC A ERASE DEBIAN EXEC A RENAME DEBIAN1 EXEC A DEBIAN = = This sequence of commands will create a "DEBIAN EXEC A" file in the proper format for execution as an "EXEC" (script) under CMS. Note that X25 (X'25') is the EBCDIC code for a line-feed character, which is X'0A' in ASCII, but we must use X25 since the data has already been translated to EBCDIC. Now we need to work on the "PARMFILE DEBIAN A" file. Edit the file with the System Product Editor (XEDIT). XEDIT PARMFILE DEBIAN A Assuming that you have SET NONDISP " in effect, which is the default, the file should look like this: ro locale=C" The quotation mark (") at the end of the line represents the line-feed character (X'25'). This character is not displayable, so XEDIT substitutes the quotation mark in its place. It is NOT a literal quotation mark. The first thing we need to do is to issue some commands on the command line to preserve the data in the file from unwanted translations: SET CASE MIXED RESPECT SET IMAGE OFF SET NULLS ON I recommend running the installer in expert mode; so issue the following commands: :1 CHANGE :locale=C:locale=C debconf/priority=low: Notice that we had to use a non-standard delimiter, the colon in this case, since the new text contains a forward slash. Now, before filing the data, make sure that the trailing line-feed character, X'25', is still there and has not been overlaid by issuing SET VERIFY OFF H 1 * This will cause the editor to display the file in hexadecimal. The last two digits displayed (except for trailing blanks, whose code in EBCDIC is 40) should be 25. The trailing blanks will be stripped off when the FILE command is issued. FILE Now, convert the file into the proper format for use by Linux: PIPE < PARMFILE DEBIAN A|XLATE E2A|FBLOCK 80 00|> PARMFILE DEBIAN1 A F ERASE PARMFILE DEBIAN A RENAME PARMFILE DEBIAN1 A = DEBIAN = This converts the file from EBCDIC back to ASCII and pads it with nulls as needed to make it a fixed-length, 80-byte file. Now check your virtual reader to make sure that there are no reader files that you want to save. The DEBIAN EXEC file that you are about to run will purge all files from your virtual reader. RDRLIST When you are ready to begin the install, type DEBIAN at a CMS "Ready;" prompt. This will spool your virtual punch to your virtual reader, punch the kernel, parmfile, and initrd images (which get transferred to the virtual reader), then IPL from the virtual reader. No CD is required! CDs are used when installing Linux in an LPAR, but when installing in a virtual machine under z/VM they are not needed. Perform the first few installation steps in order using the 3215 virtual console. These steps are as follows: 1. Configure the network device 2. Configure a network using static addressing 3. Continue installation remotely using SSH Once these steps are done, you must use a remote ssh client to connect to the virtual server, login to the installation id, and continue the installation from the network console. I use PuTTY as my remote ssh client from my Windows workstation. PuTTY is free software and is available from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ When you configure your PuTTY session, be sure to use the UTF-8 character set (under Window -> Translation) or the graphics characters used by the installer will look horrible. Once I get Debian installed, I usually change the locale to en_us via dpkg-reconfigure locales shutdown and reboot, then change my PuTTY session to ISO-8859-1. You may also want to visit my web site at http://www.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/index.htm I have a number of things on that site that may be useful to you, such as how to implement the dasd diag driver, which I recommend for anyone running Debian in a virtual machine under z/VM. For more detailed installation instructions, see the Installation Guide at http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.s390/index.html This should get you started. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
