I've built Linux-2.4.19 with NSS support and the notimer patch, and made it into a series of Debian kernel packages.
They're at http://www.sinenomine.net/downloads I did not include the kernel-source debian packages. Instead, get the virgin 2.4.19 sources, unpack them, change to that directory, and then feed the diff file (which is the link pointed to by Kernel Sources) through gunzip to patch -p1. The diff file is simply the diff you get after applying the s390-may2002, s390-1-may2002, and timer-1-may2002 patches, plus the .config file I used to generate the kernel. Then just do a make-kpkg clean --revision nss+timer.0 make-kpkg buildpackage --revision nss+timer.0 Debian has a way, using PATCH_THE_KERNEL=yes, to automatically apply this patch as part of the build process, but I haven't gotten it to work yet. Still, this will give you a current 2.4.19 system suitable for genning into an NSS. Contrary to the IBM recommendation, I recommend you set your virtual machine size as low as possible before building the NSS; 24MB is the smallest I've been able to make reliably boot when using the qeth drivers. Why? Simple--you need the same disk layout and at least that much memory on any system you IPL from that NSS. The smaller it is when you gen it, the more flexibility you have in your memory size later on. 32MB is plenty for a router machine, and 64MB is plenty for most single-app virtual machines (unless that app is WebSphere), as long as you've got plenty of swap-on-VDISK backing it. For what it's worth, elapsed time from IPL DEB24M to getting my console login prompt, on our H70, is 14 seconds. Adam
