John, 1 - Yes, you always have to worry about differences. Linux Standard Base is helping with that, but it's still a concern. Different versions of glibc, other shared libraries, etc., etc., etc.
2 - I would say "no" here. 3 - It's already been done with FCP support. Systems can access storage arrays "natively" without going through that [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3390-emulation layer any longer. (I'm assuming you meant 3390 and not 3380 as you typed it.) Any distribution can support that many 3390 volumes, though. Whether the distribution provider has that support "as distributed" or whether the IT shop has to create the device nodes is another question. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: John Rowland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 5:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: I'm researching porting an application to S/390 Linux and had the following basic questions: 1 - Do I need to be concerned about differences between Linux distributions? I.e. if I get it to work under SuSE will it work on RedHat or Debian assuming the kernel level is the same or compatible? Is the main difference in the administration/maintenance utilities provided with the package? 2 - Do I need to worry about whether the application runs in a VM or LPAR Linux configuration? If so, is there a way for my application to test which environment it is running in. 3 - Does anybody have any ideas when the number of disks available to Linux will be increased to a significant amount? For example, we have customers who would need 200+ 3380 devices to support our application if they wanted to import all existing information from MVS. I see that SuSE Enterprise Server 8 supports 600 disks, but do the other distributions support that many? ~~~~~ John Rowland Fischer International Systems Corporation www.fischerinternational.com 239 436 2751
