ZNETBOOT might help.
I wrote ZNETBOOT for to help Linux people (who don't know VM, especially
CMS) to start an installation from just a single configuration file.
The design is: fetch a kernel (using 'wget' or 'curl', all
under-the-covers), also fetch an INITRD (maybe), stack the multiple
files into your reader, then IPL 00C.
Now ... I confess ... finding a z/OS nucleus which can be dropped into
your reader ... I have no idea where or how or if it's even possible.
(But one can hope.)
Whither tape IPL?
The URLs to the kernel (and INITRD, if any) can refer to local files.
(You can stage things to "A" disk/dir if you wish. Hoping to avoid that
for the newbies, but it does work.)
Or if this is impossible with MVS, please pardon me and delete this
message.
-- R; <><
On 7/8/26 4:16 PM, Jay Maynard wrote:
We just completed a DR test using our shiny new AMI Cloud setup. Worked
great, except for one thing: a chicken-and-egg problem to get started.
The AMI Cloud bare metal recovery process involves IPLing the initial
volume by having the HMC FTP it and IPL that. It uses the same process as
the starter system, where an ICKDSF standalone restore IPLable file and
control cards are appended to the front of the volume image. This
apparently works just fine, though I have not tried it myself.
The problem is that our DR provider doesn't give us access to a bare LPAR
and the HMC to ipl with. Instead, we get a z/VM guest and IPL in that. We
cheated, and used out VTL to IPL from for this test so we could test
everything else, but this is a problem we're going to have to solve.
Since z/VM apparently cannot IPL from FTP the way the HMC does, there has
to be another way. It struck me that this is a problem IBM has solved
already, since I'm sure they make it possible to install the z/OS driver
system in a z/VM guest. Do they do so, in fact? If so, how does it work?
I'm guessing we could replicate that process with our one-pack system.
--
-- R; <><
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