Welcome! I think I share your frustration with YaST, but I'll try to avoid the religion here.
> 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. No. The RedHat installer will generate the appropriate files based when you install the system, but not interfere afterwards. You can get close with SuSE if you disable YaST with te option in the top of the rc.config. > I'm cloning Linux images. After much trial and error, I'm using the > cloning methodology described in redbook SG24-6299, Linux on IBM eServer > zSeries and S/390 :ISP/ASP Solutions. (Their method: copy the Linux files, > and log onto the new image using the ramdisk starter system, and run a > shell script to update the network configuration via a patch using a > generic.diff file). This isn't pretty, but it works. I'm doing all of > this because SUSeConfig gets in the way at boot time and removes any > changes to rc.config, et al. I don't think changes to rc.config disappear. Only changes to the files that get rebuilt by SuSEConfig. That's why the description in the Redbook showed to patch both rc.config and the generated files. Life gets much easier when you go to a Linux-2.4 kernel because it will let you dynamically attach and detach minidisks. That will let you link the disk and run the patch and diff commands from a 'master' Linux image. If you look at the RedHat install you'll find that it is fairly easy to take the rhsetup script apart and do the entire install process from a master Linux image linking to the target disk (roughly running rpm with the --root option). But if you're into speed then it is still faster to copy the data and patch the personality into the system. Rob
