No reason this would not work, John. Maybe you should get less sleep more often. You're thinking outside the box!
It is counter to the usual methodology, so it is unlikely that IBM would find a large market in it, but some. I imagine that most shops expect their mainframe to have config and other bootstrap kinds of resources centralized on said mainframe rather than have their mainframe beholden to some other boot server. But there's no technical reason why it would not work. Outside the box! So ... some critter running under PXE would have to detect a primary OSA, play DHCP client on that, send out a (TFTP?) request for a kernel, and so on. Strictly speaking, the kernel you load could be a CP nucleus. Why not?? (I do wish we had a forward maintainable tool to convert CMS MODULEs to/from ELF loadable binaries.) Just like we've been telling our users (w/r/t Linux on the mainframe), "the mainframe is just a computer". -- R; "McKown, John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: Linux on 390 Port <[email protected]> 09/11/2007 09:59 AM Please respond to Linux on 390 Port <[email protected]> From "McKown, John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To [email protected] cc Subject really INSANE question - network IPL? OK, I've not been getting enough sleep, lately, so my mind is really weird. OK, weirder than usual (which is pretty weird). And I wasn't sure which forum (IBM-Main, IBMVM, or Linux-390) to post this one. But I decided on this one. Anyway. One thing that a PC can do is boot from a network source, called PXE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment). Now, IBM has made it so that an appropriate OS (i.e. Linux) can IPL from a SAN (SCSI IPL). I was just considering what it might take to IPL from a network server instead. Granted, this would likely only be to IPL Linux. And I guess something like this could be emulated by booting PXE compatable software from a DVD on the HMC. I was just thinking that this might be an interesting way to "bootstrap" a Linux installation environment. Also, I wonder if a "Linux for System z" liveDVD would be possible. Or does such a thing already exist? I really need more sleep. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer HealthMarkets Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage Administrative Services Group Information Technology The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged and/or confidential. It is for intended addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication is strictly prohibited and could, in certain circumstances, be a criminal offense. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply and delete this message without copying or disclosing it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
