Last updated on:
Sunday, July 06, 2008

Software

• Linux/390 Distributions
• Linux/390 Patches
• Hercules - An S/390 Hardware Emulator

Information

• Large numbers of links
• Linux/390 HOWTOs
• IBM's Linux/390 pages
• Distribution Contents
• IBM VM and Linux Resources
• Linux man pages
• Notes & Observations
• Top 10 reasons to run Linux on VM
• Linux/390 at Princeton University
• i/370 Port, aka Bigfoot
• linuxvm.org Archives

Community

• Community Members
• Linux-390 Listserv
• Linux/390 Presentations
• Linux/390 Subscribers
• Linux/390 Survey Results

News

• Enterprise Linux Today
• Linux Journal
• Linux Today
• Linux World
• Kernel Traffic

Fun

• Ubersoft
• User Friendly

Credits

• Cast of characters

Archives of linuxvm.org

06/03/2002 - Mike MacIsaac reported finding a work-around to a problem he'd reported previously. A 2.4.17 kernel compile was failing with the following error:

gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.17/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes
-Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common
-pipe -fno-strength-reduce    -DEXPORT_SYMTAB -c s390_ksyms.c
s390_ksyms.c:61: `do_call_softirq' undeclared here (not in a function)
s390_ksyms.c:61: initializer element is not constant
s390_ksyms.c:61: (near initialization for
`__ksymtab_do_call_softirq.value')
make[1]: *** [s390_ksyms.o] Error 1

Code maturity level options  --->
Loadable module support  --->
Processor type and features  --->
General setup  --->
Block device drivers  --->
Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)  --->
Character device drivers  --->
Network device drivers  --->
Networking options  --->
File systems  --->
Kernel hacking  --->
---
Load an Alternate Configuration File
Save Configuration to an Alternate File

Networking options  --->
<*> Packet socket
[ ]   Packet socket: mmapped IO
<*> Netlink device emulation
[*] Network packet filtering (replaces ipchains)
[*]   Network packet filtering debugging (NEW)
[*] Socket Filtering
<*> Unix domain sockets
[*] TCP/IP networking
[*]   IP: multicasting       // LEAVE ON!
[*]   IP: advanced router
[*]     IP: policy routing (NEW)
[*]       IP: use netfilter MARK value as routing key (NEW)
[*]       IP: fast network address translation (NEW)
[*]     IP: equal cost multipath (NEW)
[*]     IP: use TOS value as routing key (NEW)
[*]     IP: verbose route monitoring (NEW)
[*]     IP: large routing tables (NEW)
[*]   IP: kernel level autoconfiguration
[ ]     IP: DHCP support (NEW)
[ ]     IP: BOOTP support (NEW)
[ ]     IP: RARP support (NEW)
<M>   IP: tunneling
< >   IP: GRE tunnels over IP
[ ]   IP: ARP daemon support (EXPERIMENTAL)
[ ]   IP: TCP Explicit Congestion Notification support
[ ]   IP: TCP syncookie support (disabled per default)
  IP: Netfilter Configuration  --->
  IP: Virtual Server Configuration  --->
< >   The IPv6 protocol (EXPERIMENTAL)
< >   Kernel httpd acceleration (EXPERIMENTAL)
[ ] Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > 802.1Q VLAN Support (EXPERIMENTAL)
---
< > The IPX protocol
< > Appletalk protocol support

IP: Netfilter Configuration  --->
<M> Connection tracking (required for masq/NAT)
<M>   FTP protocol support (NEW)
<M>   IRC protocol support (NEW)
<M> Userspace queueing via NETLINK (EXPERIMENTAL)
<M> IP tables support (required for filtering/masq/NAT)
<M>   limit match support (NEW)
<M>   MAC address match support (NEW)
<M>   netfilter MARK match support (NEW)
<M>   Multiple port match support (NEW)
<M>   TOS match support (NEW)
<M>   LENGTH match support (NEW)
<M>   TTL match support (NEW)
<M>   tcpmss match support (NEW)
<M>   Connection state match support (NEW)
<M>   Unclean match support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
<M>   Owner match support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
<M>   Packet filtering (NEW)
<M>     REJECT target support (NEW)
<M>     MIRROR target support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
<M>   Full NAT (NEW)
<M>     MASQUERADE target support (NEW)
<M>     REDIRECT target support (NEW)
<M>     Basic SNMP-ALG support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
<M>   Packet mangling (NEW)
<M>     TOS target support (NEW)
<M>     MARK target support (NEW)
<M>   LOG target support (NEW)
<M>   TCPMSS target support (NEW)
< > ipchains (2.2-style) support
< > ipfwadm (2.0-style) support

IP: Virtual Server Configuration  --->
<M> virtual server support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
[*]   IP virtual server debugging (NEW)
(12)   IPVS connection table size (the Nth power of 2) (NEW)
--- IPVS scheduler
<M>   round-robin scheduling (NEW)
<M>   weighted round-robin scheduling (NEW)
<M>   least-connection scheduling scheduling (NEW)
<M>   weighted least-connection scheduling (NEW)
<M>   locality-based least-connection scheduling (NEW)
<M>   locality-based least-connection with replication scheduling (NEW)
<M>   destination hashing scheduling (NEW)
<M>   source hashing scheduling (NEW)
--- IPVS application helper
<M>   FTP protocol helper (NEW)

File systems  --->
[*] POSIX Access Control Lists (NEW)
[ ] Quota support
< > Kernel automounter support
< > Kernel automounter version 4 support (also supports v3)
< > Reiserfs support
< > ADFS file system support
< > Amiga FFS file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > Apple Macintosh file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > BFS file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)
<*> Ext3 journalling file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)
[*]   Ext3 extended attributes
[*]     Ext3 extended attribute block sharing
[*]     Ext3 extended user attributes
[*]     Ext3 POSIX Access Control Lists
[*]   JBD (ext3) debugging support
< > DOS FAT fs support
< > EFS file system support (read only) (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > Journalling Flash File System (JFFS) support
< > Journalling Flash File System v2 (JFFS2) support
< > Compressed ROM file system support
[ ] Virtual memory file system support (former shm fs)
< > Simple RAM-based file system support
< > ISO 9660 CDROM file system support
< > Minix fs support
< > FreeVxFS file system support (VERITAS VxFS(TM) compatible)
< > NTFS file system support (read only)
< > OS/2 HPFS file system support
[*] /proc file system support
[ ] /dev file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)  //TURN OFF! (thanks Rob:)
[ ] /dev/pts file system for Unix98 PTYs
< > QNX4 file system support (read only) (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > ROM file system support
<*> Second extended fs support
[*]   Ext2 extended attributes (NEW)
[*]     Ext2 extended attribute block sharing
[*]     Ext2 extended user attributes
[*]     Ext2 POSIX Access Control Lists
< > System V/Xenix/V7/Coherent file system support
< > UDF file system support (read only)
< > UFS file system support (read only)
Network File Systems  --->
Partition Types  --->

06/03/2002 - Neale Ferguson reported a news article about IBM signing an agreement with the German government to supply them with Linux-based systems, rather than Microsoft-based ones.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2023000/2023127.stm

06/03/2002 - Mark Post reported some rather old news. Sistina Software made it's Global File System (GFS) package "non-free" software, sometime in August, 2001. As a result, a new Open Source project, OpenGFS, was started to provide an alternative, as was done with OpenSSH. Alan Cox is listed as one of nine developers, but Alan gives credit to Christoph Hellwig for doing all "the real hard work." Alan also commented "There are some very cool things brewing on the shared disk file system front - wait and see."
http://www.opengfs.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengfs/

06/04/2002 - Neale Ferguson posted a pointer to StorageTek's announcement of their SnapVantage software. According to the announcement, the software "...facilitates the rapid deployment of multiple Linux virtual servers that reside on StorageTek's Shared Virtual Array disk subsystems. Server management capabilities provided enable you to perform common administrative functions for Linux servers, VM administration, and SVA disk activities...all from within the friendly SnapVantage GUI."
In response, Scott Ledbetter of StorageTek posted a rather lengthy note that talks about some of the features of the product, and invited feedback from the mailing list.
http://www.storagetek.com/prodserv/products/software/svan/
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.27859

06/04/2002 - Mark Post posted the URL to an article that talks about Taiwan joining the list of world governents that are looking towards Linux and Open Source software to reduce dependence on Microsoft, and perhaps stimulate their local software development industry.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-931885.html

06/04/2002 - In response to a question about how to clear a 3270 console on Linux/390, Richard Hitt of UTS Global, one of the authors of the driver, responded "The command

        echo -e \\f

        alias clear='echo -e \\f'

06/05/2002 - Gerhard Hiller of IBM reported the following updates to the DeveloperWorks web site:

• We are releasing a gcc 2.95.3 ("old" tool-chain) recommended patch for the "kernel 2.4.7" and "kernel 2.4.17" streams.
• You may find the Overview useful to understand what we label "streams";-)

06/05/2002 - Dennis Wicks reported that the URL to the parsecfg program that is mentioned in S390 tools package is incorrect, and gave a better pointer to it.
http://www.netsw.org/system/libs/config/

06/05/2002 - Kurt Acker of IBM reported that IBM has created Info APAR II13318 to aggregate information about many of the concerns and limitations of IBM's SAF (System Adminstration Facility) VIF-to-z/VM migration tool. Access to IBM's IBMLink is necessary to be able to view the APAR.
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.27897

06/06/2002 - In response to a request for a low overhead GUI desktop environment for Linux/390, several people suggested XFce, as well as Blackbox. XFce is similar to CDE, while blackbox is not. Alan Cox commented that XFce is "snappy on a 24Mb 486..", and that he had RPMs for the package on his FPT site.
http://www.xfce.org
ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/
http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/

06/06/2002 - Joe Poole reported that his company was beta testing the Linux/390 version of the RAV anti-virus product that is marketed by RAE Internet. According to Joe, "It's quick, and doesn't consume much resources." He also mentioned that they are beta testing the Linux/390 agent of the Zeke scheduling package from Allen Systems Group. The main product runs on OS/390, and controls the agents running Linux/390 and Windows® NT.
http://www.raeinternet.com/
http://www.asg.com/products/product_details.asp?id=80

06/06/2002 - For anyone who's missed it, there is a version of Oracle 9i available for Linux/390 now.
http://otn.oracle.com/software/products/oracle9i/htdocs/390soft.html

06/07/2002 - In response to a discussion about training, Jim Elliott posted the URL to to IBM's "e-Learning Offerings" page.
http://ibm.com/training/us/elearning/

06/07/2002 - Mike MacIsaac reported that two new Redpieces (Redbooks in progress) for Linux/390 are now available. "Linux on zSeries and S/390: Systems Management," addresses the question "how do I manage my set of Linux images?" With this book the reader should be able to:

• Identify appropriate tools and configuration definitions, required to perform the primary systems management processes for a set of Linux images on zSeries
• Create a complete systems management context or implement processes/tools for a given subset of options presented in the book for a given set of processes

06/07/2002 - In response to a comment that the mod_webapp source packaged mentioned in the mailing list archives had gone missing, Mark Post did some poking around and eventually found its new home. The Tomcat project had moved it into an "archive" section of their site.
http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-tomcat-4.0/archives/v4.0.2-b2/src/webapp-module-1.0.2-tc402-src.tar.gz

06/11/2002 - Mark Post forwarded from a co-worker the URL to a study on Linux and Open Source published by Mitre in July of 2001. According to Mark, "the majority of it covers the strengths and weaknesses of Linux versus Windows® NT and proprietary UNIX systems, as well as the use and growth of use of Linux in commercial industries."
http://www.mitre.org/support/papers/tech_papers_01/kenwood_software/kenwood_software.pdf

06/11/2002 - Mark Post posted the following note:
"For everyone out there that's ever wondered where to get kernel patches for something or other, or how to put them on and recompile the kernel, check out http://www.kernelnewbies.org/. They have a nice list of resources, including a huge laundry list of various patches for various added functionality (some of which are in the mainstream kernel tree, and others which are not)."
http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
http://www.kernelnewbies.org/patches/

06/12/2002 - Rich Smrcina sent an announcement that Grede Foundries had moved their "internet presence" to Linux/390. Grede has three separate domain names they use, and is using WebSphere on them, along with some other goodies.
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.28114

06/12/2002 - Gerhard Hiller of IBM reported the following updates to the DeveloperWorks web site:

• We are releasing a recommended patch for the "kernel 2.4.17" stream (for use with the old tool-chain)
• Furthermore you may find the "Downloading the IBM OSA-Express MIB" information useful with the OSA SNMP support of the "May 2002" stream.

06/13/2002 - Mark Post contributed a pointer to an InfoWorld article on "how numerous governments around the world are looking at Open Source software as a means to accomplish several things:

• Reduce software expenses
• Reduce software piracy
• Encourage local developers
• Reduce the dominance of Microsoft in their local economy."

06/13/2002 - Mark Post posted a pointer to a "management brief" on one of IBM's web pages from a company called International Technology Group. The study purports to show that IBM solutions "consistently beat out Sun and Compaq in helping customers to reduce TCO, by as much as 31%."
http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/library/whitepapers/itg_vpelcb.html

06/17/2002 - During a discussion about FTP servers and clients for MS Windows®, Todd Lyons contributed a link to a package called Bullet Proof FTP, which he said was his current favorite. It's available for a 30 day trial free download. Phil Payne recommended Terrapin.
http://www.bpftp.com
http://www.tpin.com/

06/18/2002 - Mark Post reported a New York Times article that talks about the Walt Disney Company's adoption of Linux for digital animation work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/technology/18LINU.html....

06/18/2002 - In the process of answering a question, Jim Elliott contributed the information that there is a trial version of WebSphere Application Server, V4.0 Advanced Single Server Edition for Linux on zSeries that can be downloaded.
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?go=y&rs=wasael

06/19/2002 - Mark Post reported the announcement of a security vulnerability in both the 1.3 and 2.0 series of Apache, and that new versions were now released. Source code packages were available, with binaries soon to follow. The new versions addressed the vulnerabilities reported in CAN-2002-0392 (mitre.org) and CERT VU#944335.
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.28313

06/19/2002 - Peter Webb reported an article from The Register that talked about IBM's place and growth in the Intel Linux market. In the story was a link to a site that deals exclusively with the idea of Linux on the desktop. At the moment, the leading distributions for desktop Linux, according to a survey on that site are Mandrake and ELX (Everyone's Linux). Mandrake is familiar to a lot of people, but ELX is a relative newcomer.
http://www.theregus.com/content/53/25299.html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/
http://www.elxlinux.com/elx/index.php

06/12/2002 - Gerhard Hiller of IBM reported "miscellaneous updates dated 2002-06-17" to the DeveloperWorks web site. The "What's new" page had this information:

• Throughput improvements with reduced VM CP cost for Gigabit Ethernet may be achieved for Linux guests under VM using lates OSA microcode and z/VM PTFs in conjunction with latest qdio and qeth
• The "On-demand timer" patch for Recommended "kernel 2.4.17" now applies correctly.

06/20/2002 - Motohiro Kanda reported that the kernel patches to be able to access VOS (MVS-compatible) formatted DASD were now available. The patches are against the 2.2.16 kernel, with 2.4 still under development. At the moment, there is no English documentation available.
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Prod/comp/soft1/linux_m/gpl/get-linux-2.2.16-mp-1.2.diff-gpl.html
http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.28344

06/20/2002 - In response to a question about OpenLDAP, Bill Barr reported that there was some help available at www.direct-to-linux.com. Since this site seems to be really named www.yolinux.com, I've modified the URL to reflect that.
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialLDAP.html

06/20/2002 - Lionel Dyck posted the URL to an article that he described as "interesting article with some postive things to say." It was a item Gartner, but the site requires (apparently free) membership registration.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00220020617jdt01.htm&fromtm=e101-2

06/21/2002 - Gustavo Niemeyer of Conectiva informed me that they had ported their distribution to Linux/390. At the moment, they only have a 32-bit version available. For the curious, but monolingual, the web site is entirely in Portuguese. The link to the page has been added to the list of Binary distributions on this page.
http://www.conectiva.com.br/cpub/pt/servicosbase/conectivalinuxs390.php

06/21/2002 - IBM issued a press release titled "IBM Delivers Total Linux Solutions to Wall Street." The first paragraph pretty much covers what the rest of the release covers in more detail:
"IBM announced today the opening of the first center in New York City to help the financial services industry deploy Linux® solutions. The Linux center, which will be based in IBM's landmark building at 590 Madison Avenue, will include hardware, software and services from IBM as well as various participating companies, designed to help financial services customers test and implement Linux applications."
http://www.ibm.com/industries/financialservices/pressrelease/PRESSRELEASES_82771.html

06/23/2002 - Jim Elliott published the URLs to three new IBM Redpapers. The titles are:

• Getting Started with zSeries Fibre Channel Protocol
• Linux on IBM zSeries and S/390: High Availability for z/VM and Linux
• Linux on IBM zSeries and S/390: Securing Linux for zSeries with a Central z/OS LDAP Server (RACF)

06/24/2002 - In response to a question about setting up Gnome and KDE, Sergey Korzhevsky recommended downloading the SuSE book and reading the "chapter about X-Windows system."
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/s390/sles7-beta/31-bit/cd1/sles7_s390_en.pdf

06/24/2002 - In response to Mark Post's note that fixed versions of Apache were available, Philipp Knirsch of Red Hat notified the mailing list that they had an updated version available. The binary for Linux/390 still needed to go through QA testing, but the SRPM was available now. The binary became available later that day. The instructions he gave for rebuilding the RPM from source and installing it were:

rpmbuild --rebuild apache-1.3.22-6.src.rpm
rpm -Fvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/s390/apache*

06/24/2002 - Gerhard Hiller of IBM reported the following update to the DeveloperWorks web site:

• gcc 3.1 recommended patches with bug-fixes for the "May 2002 stream"

06/24/2002 - Stefan Gybas of the Debian project posted a note detailing instructions on how to upgrade OpenSSH for Debian to close the recently announced OpenSSH security vulnerability.
"Debian Security Advisory (DSA) 134 [1] talks about a possible remote exploit for all versions of OpenSSH. It is therefore highly recommened to immediately upgrade your ssh version to 3.3p1 which reduces the risk of an attack. To do this on Debian GNU/Linux for S/390 you have two choices:

1. Add the line

   deb http://security.debian.org woody/updates main contrib non-free

   to /etc/apt/sources.list and issue the commands "apt-get update" and "apt-get install ssh" (this requires a connection from your Debian/390 system to the Internet) or
2. download the .deb files for s390 from the the location mentioned in the advisory (this can be done from any PC connected to the Internet), copy them to your Debian/390 system and install them with "dpkg -i <package>".

06/28/2002 - Jim Sibley contributed some sample bash scripts to create an LVM logical volume set. They've been added to the HOWTOs page.
http://linuxvm.org/Info/HOWTOs/lvm.html

06/28/2002 - Jim Sibley contributed an updated version of Reba. According to the readme.txt file that came with it, "Reba is a file system benchmark focused on the dasd driver and hardware file system using sequential write and read." And, "Reba is based on Bonnie, a file system benchmark which attempts to study bottlenecks."
http://linuxvm.org/Patches/S390/rebaread.txt
http://linuxvm.org/Patches/S390/reba12.tgz