Whoa, folks. Flamethrowers on idle... > If IBM wants their customers to run Linux ONLY under VM on > 390 hardware, > they should come right out and say so. Then I guess we'd > bite the bullet, > license VM and start learning it.
Different issue -- let's not confuse them. The device driver issue also exists under VM for the OSA cards -- it has nothing to do with VM or LPAR or bare metal. >If they want to continue > to claim it can > run in an LPAR or in basic mode, they need to devote the > resources required > to keep their OCO modules current. See above. > One would have thought > having drivers > compatible with the GA release of Red Hat would have been > enough incentive > for IBM. Even a statement of intent from IBM as to when the > drivers might > be available would be welcome. Keep in mind that Red Hat and Linux are not synonymous (marketing efforts to the contrary). It's not a distribution issue, it's an intellectual property issue. IBM feels they need to protect the IP in the OSAs, and that's their right to decide. If I come into your house and tell you I need your nifty new TV set for free, are you prepared to give it to me? Thought not. Alan Altmark made a very cogent comment in another forum: it's a question of where we want IBM to put their resources, and taking a developer away from new function to fix old function or restructure a bunch of drivers won't help the overall effort much. Then there's testing, etc, etc, etc -- it's not a free process to get something like this done. I think the fastest way to solve this problem is to volunteer a team of programmers to go to an IBM facility, sign away their first-born children in terms of NDAs, and rewrite the OSA and QDIO drivers to have a portable interface that would be acceptable to the kernal development folks. I'll volunteer to pay a resource to do this -- if there are others reading this that are willing to do the same, I think we can make this work (certainly given that a number of the subscribers of this list work for big software companies that do this kind of development, we chip in a bit, give Neale, Rick, and Ross an all-expenses-paid week in Poughkeepsie), and we should have something we (both the community and IBM) like at the end. I'd like to ask the IBMers to see whether this would be possible. I'll work on getting backing, or arranging a resource of my own. > Having Red Hat Linux installed and running in an LPAR with no IP > connectivity isn't of much use to me. I've tried bitching at > IBM, but I'm > either bitching via the wrong channels or they just don't care. Getting angry or railing at IBM won't help either. Putting a concrete proposal up front to IBM that has some definable business value will go somewhere. -- db
