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[Linux/390 under z/VM 4.2.0] CP works forever (Lenny): details



Title: [Linux/390 under z/VM 4.2.0] CP works forever (Lenny): det
Hi,                                     30/4/11

thanks for answering so quickly!

At 18:54 +0200 29/04/11, Philipp Kern wrote:
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:36:34AM +0700, Christian Boitet wrote:
> > 12 *-* 'CP IPL 000C CLEAR'
> > >>>    "CP IPL 000C CLEAR"
> > 0000003 FILES CHANGED
>
> It seems 100% OK, but then it hangs.
> We checked of messages from CP (it supports VINPUT) to the Support
> Element (SE), no messages.

For completeness: how did you transfer the files to CMS?

by ftp, in binary F 80 format for KERNEL DEBIAN and INITRD DEBIAN, and in ascii for PARMFILE DEBIAN and DEBIAN EXEC.

Actually, as ftp on this VM did not work, we did the operation on another VM and copied (using COPYFILE) the 4 files obtained to the VM (LINUX7 in our installation) on which we want to install Debian/Lenny, and on which we did the necessary transformation of DEBIAN EXEC and PARMFILE DEBIAN.

We followed exactly the instructions indicated in the Debian installation documentation. I copy them below, with a few comments.

We had to convert the PARMFILE DEBIAN back from ebcdic into ascii F 80, I did it under Xedit and checked the correctness by visulizing the Hex form, it was OK, including for the EOL character (X'2A').

DEBIAN EXEC, of course, has to remain in ebcdic. I also edited it to put a trace in it, that is all. The trace shows it executed as expected.

Best regards,

Christian Boitet

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern

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================================================================================
Instruction to install a Debian Linux/390 under VM
We tried squeeze first, but it is for s390x -- 64 bits.
Then we replaced squeeze by lenny and did the same.
The text was communicated to us by Stephen Powell (thanks!).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://lists.debian.org/debian-s390/2010/09/msg00013.html

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.)
==> We had to try Lenny as said above as Squeeze is for 64 bits only and we have a Multiprise Series 3000 Model H30, 32 bits.

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

==> This was done as it is in the VM definition.

Now, FTP to your favorite Debian mirror.  For example,

   ftp carroll.aset.psu.edu
   anonymous
   yourid@yourdomain
   passive
   cd /pub/linux/distributions/debian
   cd dists/sid/main/installer-s390/current/images/generic

==> cd dists/lenny/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. 

==> OK. We have 3 times the necessary space on the 191 A disk.

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.

==> This was checked under Xedit and it seemed OK.

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
   FILE
   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.

==> This was checked under Xedit and it seemed OK.

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.


==> Here CP went into a loop (apparently), using up to 70% of CPU time (value reutrned by "#cp ind user"). We are blocked here.

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   
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-
================================================================================

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