Installation report for Debian on S/390

[Gerhard Tonn <GerhardTonn@swol.de>]

This is the very first installation report for Debian on S/390. Since I am 
currently the only one, who is not on vacation and I don't know exactly how 
to package the installation utilities, the installation is based on the files
 
sid.initrd (ramdisk image)
sid.image-2.4.5 (kernel image)
sid.parmfile (parameters passed to the kernel)
 
found at http://source.rfc822.org.
 
As soon as we will have uploaded the utilities, we will write the next 
report. All manual steps will be covered by a script in the next version of 
the installation utilities.
 
The installation has been run in a virtual machine from a virtual (card) 
reader. 

First of all I downloaded the 3 files and added non-free network modules from 

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux390/download_obj.html

to the ramdisk. Then I adapted the parmfile by adding the address of the disk 
Debian was to be installed on. After the files had been put into the virtual 
reader, the boot process was started by 
ipl 00c clear
..

After the successful boot, the network modules were loaded by insmod. The 
network setup was done by ifconfig and route. These steps were executed on the
console.

insmod qdio
insmod qeth qeth0,0xPPPP,0xPPPP,0xPPPP
ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
 
After the successful network setup, the change of the root password and the 
creation of a non-root user, a telnet session with a non-root user was 
started. By switching to root the installation process was continued.
 
I added then the search domain and nameserver to /etc/resolv.conf.
 
The next commands are:
dasdfmt -b 4096 -f /dev/dasd/yyyy/device 
to format the disk.

fdasd /dev/dasd/yyyy/device
to create a partition.

mke2fs /dev/dasd/yyyy/part1
to make a filesystem.

Then I mounted it by
mount /dev/dasd/yyyy/part1 /mnt
 
In order to enable proxy settings I edited /etc/wgetrc.
and then issued

debootstrap sid /mnt http://source.rfc822.org/debian
which ended successfully.

The next steps were:

copy /etc/inittab to /mnt/etc/inittab
chroot /mnt
change root password
add a non-root user
edit /etc/network/interfaces
edit /etc/hostname
add search domain and nameserver to /etc/resolv.conf
edit fstab
 
adjust /etc/apt/sources.list
install kernel-image
install ssh
 
edit /boot/parmfile
zipl -t /boot -i /boot/image-2.4.5 -p /boot/parmfile

which is the bootloader on S/390.

Finally I issued
 
halt
ipl xxx clear 

using the disk address as xxx.

After the successful boot, I could login with ssh and install additional 
packages.

Regards,
Gerhard