Re: switch to debian on s390 enviroment from IBM

[Jochen Röhrig <jr@debian.s390.org>]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 03:30:58PM +0100, Noel Koethe wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> did anybody of you tried to replace the SuSE or TurboLinux
> installation on the s/390 enviroment from IBM
> (http://troublet.zseriespenguins.ihost.com/) to Debian?
> 
> Our theoretical way is to install a minimal Debian to /usr/local
> and then use the reboot service and switch to /dev/local/ as
> / (after copying /boot to /usr/local/boot and editing /usr/local/
> boot/parmfile).

I didn't try it and I don't know the IBM s/390 environment. But I think what
you describe should work, if

1) /usr/local is on a separate device and
2) the reboot service allows you to specify the number of the boot
   device (which in your case must be the device on which /usr/local resides)

Before rebooting you should not forget to change the root-fs in
/usr/local/parmfile to the /usr/local-device and to make the
/usr/local-device bootable by cd'ing to /usr/local/boot and running a

  zipl -t . -i <your-kernel-image> -p parmfile

If /usr/local is not on a separate device it might be possible to boot
with an initrd and change the root-filesystem in the linuxrc-script to
/usr/local by using pivot_root(8) - but I'm not at all sure whether this
works (for more information have a look at the Documentation/initrd.txt
in the kernel-source tree).

Cheers.

Jochen