On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 02:56:21PM -0500, Post, Mark K wrote:

| All of this is documented (sort of) in the Distributions Redbook (I just
| used it to refresh my memory).
| http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg246264.html

Got this and reading.  Can you confirm my summarization:

There is no specific default .ins file.  IPL-ing by CDROM cannot be made
automatic (short of reprogramming the HMC system, I suppose).  Someone
has to pick the specific .ins file to be used.

And then, the CDROM is not available as a data device.  But what if a
4th file is listed?  Would that file be readable as the 4th tape file
on the emulated tape?

If a 4th file is not supported, one could use the rootfs feature in place
of the initrd feature, and load system install code there.  Hopefully,
the kernel loader won't do a 3rd file read from the tape in case of no
initrd (the parm file would say this ... and I'm not above a little code
hacking).  Then the early userspace code would run from rootfs via /init
and proceed read that 3rd file from tape to extract even more files in
some format like bzipped tar/cpio.

My goal is to build a multi-arch Live CD (sans X) for administrative use,
e.g. typically a rescue CD, but some variant purposes could also be done.
I already can do this for PC/x86 and Sun Sparc.  I want to add S/390 and
PPC capability (all one one CD).  This Live system would NOT need the CD
at run time (so this limitation in the HMC would be moot); everything would
be loaded into rootfs/ramfs (40 MB to 150 MB depending on version).

So anyway, this looks like it's doable except that it has to be done on
a manual interactive basis for S/390, unless the HMC can somehow be
programmed to automatically IPL a specific .ins file upon unattended
power-up.

--
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| Phil Howard KA9WGN       | http://linuxhomepage.com/      http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/   http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
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