Re: Future of the s390 port

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

Adam Thornton wrote:
> Does the .ins file specify load addresses?

Yes, it does.
See: http://lists.debian.org/debian-s390/2009/09/msg00027.html

> The short version I would suggest is "see how SuSE does it" and do that.

Right, so who has a *recent* SuSE CD he/she can disect? I personally don't 
feel like registering with Novell just for this.

Main questions are:
- what does the .ins file they use look like?
- what kind of initrd do they use: initramfs or "oldfashioned" initrd?
- if oldfashioned, then what filesystem do they use?
- if initramfs, then how do they manage to boot it?
- what is the kernel config they use in their installer?

I've had CD boot working with an ext2 initrd and I suspect that would still 
work (and testing that would be fairly straightforward). But the Debian 
kernels have all moved away from that. So we really want to find out how 
to boot from CD using an initramfs initrd.

If we can't I'd have to try to convince Bastian to compile ext2 into the 
s390 kernels again.

Cheers,
FJP