On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:43:43PM -0700, Chris Senko wrote: > Hi. I'm doing a trial of SUSe Linux S/390 7.0 and z/VM 4.2 in an LPAR, > and I seem to be in a constant "discovery" mode. I'm hoping someone can > show me some better ways of doing what I'm doing. I'm basically a > mainframe person, new to Linux. > > Most of my issues are related to SUSe Config. > > Questions: > > MUST you use the diff and patch commands for even the simplest changes to > rc.config?
I never have. > I want to add dasd dynamically, but have been unable to using: insmod dasd > dasd=xxx-xxx on a running system - instead, I've booted the starter system > and run insmod for a temporary disk. Under 2.2.16 you can't dynamically add dasd. Under 2.4 you can, with echo -n "add device range=xxx-yyy" >> /proc/dasd/devices > The /boot/parmfile doesn't appear to be used, ie, my changes aren't backed > out at boot time by config, but they have no affect. Where's the "real" > one? I want to add dasd permanently. You have to run silo to update the boot sector of the dasd. Or zipl under 2.4. > I'm normally logged on to the systems via Extra for Windows. Using this, I > cannot use PICO or VI to edit files, and must use a telnet session. Is > there a way to set up the Linux console and Extra to allow me to use these > editors? No. The unix world expects a character-cell-addressible, one-character-at- a-time terminal, not something line-oriented like the 3270. Although with tnvt100 maybe you could, but I don't recommend it. > What editor would you recommend if you don't /can't have a telnet session > active, for instance, when your network is not active. I've used sed to > edit files from an Extra session. Is there something better? I use cat. In short, no. Nothing better. > Does Redhat S/390 have the same issues as SUSe, ie, does it have a config > program that checks dates and changes and restores any changes that you may > have made outside of the patch program? Yast doesn't seem to address some > of the configuration changes that I would like to make. Like what? I haven't had any problem with SuSEconfig clobbering changes that weren't pretty easy to make in /etc/rc.config. > When constructing a Linux firewall, is it preferable to have a single Linux > system as entry to the other Linux systems, or run a firewall on each Linux > system? I use a single Linux system as the gatewya, but see below. > If you select a single image as the firewall, and it is configed > pointotpoint to the VM TCPIP, and the other Linux images are configed > pointopoint to the Linux firewall, do the firewall and the other linux > images need to be on unique subnets? (I think that's the terminology). I think you're approaching this the wrong way; since you have z/VM 4.2, I'd go with Linux 2.4 and set up guest LANs rather than setting up a lot of PtP links. As for cloning, what I have done is make /usr shared read-only between all my instances and have a canonical / filesystem image. DDR that, boot it, edit /etc/rc.config to give it a unique hostname and IP address, run SuSEconfig (which never overwrites rc.config for me), and reIPL. Takes about 5 minutes if I have to do it by hand; if I sat down and invested an hour in a sed script and the boot process, it could happen automatically, but I haven't done that yet. Adam
