Rob van der Heij writes: > When we saw the first new z/VM installations with Linux show up, I > proposed a new feature for the Linux disk driver that would allow > arbitrary tracks to be read and written (like the pipeline stages). > That way a Linux guest could be used to backup the VM packs along with > the Linux data. And for D/R restore you could first IPL one Linux > guest native, restore the VM packs (from TSM) and then IPL VM again. > Something like that would fit your needs. > The design of the driver appeared to be very simple after a few beers, > but next morning it turned out to be harder.
I wrote writetrack and readtrack kernel modules for Linux 5 years ago which implement ioctls to do that along with simplistic userland utilities and they worked OK for me to transfer various VM and z/OS disks as images via plain Linux files. The internal kernel API for DASD driver disciplines was a bit icky back then so they would need a good polish (or simply a rewrite based on the existing template). The unit record driver I did was eventually noticed and requested by enough customers (I assume) that Boe asked me for it, polished it and pushed it upstream so perhaps a similar thing might work if people are interested in full track read/write for Linux. No guarantees, since I don't know how those requests were routed and prioritised before they ended up as a request to me. I suggest requests be sent via whatever the usual official route is for customer requests (i.e. not directly to me, I'm afraid). --Malcolm -- Malcolm Beattie System z SWG/STG, Europe IBM UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
