I thought it would be cool if the hardware platform could emulate a set of Keyboard/Video/Mouse devices via pretend PCI devices presented into the LPAR that hook into like a VNC / RemoteDesktop / SPICE software service that runs on the SE or HMC.
If you virtualize it like pretend PCI devices ( similar to what KVM does internally for guests ) then Linux doesn't need any new drivers if you emulate things that the kernel already knows how to talk to: Cirrus Logic VGA card, USB Keyboard & Mouse , possibly USB CDROM too and you can pass through an ISO mount from your remote desktop client. This would do a bunch of things: a) Installation now works like on every other Linux platform : remote into the LPAR / Guest using the same tools as every other platform ( VNC , SPICE, RemoteDesktop ) and you don't have to muck about with creating a custom parmfile at all - if we can remote media mount a .iso through the client to present as a USB attached DVD then it appears as local install media and you don't need a working IP stack for the installer anymore. b) Fixing broken systems now works like every other Linux platform : remote into the VNC / SPICE / RemoteDesktop link and fix the network using whatever suits your fancy. Full on X11 GUI if you really want to - go for it. c) Hypervisor agnostic : since its basically fake PCI devices you generate as many as needed per LPAR and either use them directly from the LPAR or attach them to a specific guest. You would have to have some kind of mapping of "PCI device group 1 is VNC desktop :1 " , and you would have to manage that from the HMC similar to what we do with OSA ICC profiles - but thats a solvable problem. Nobody else I talked to thought it was cool though... :( But if youuuuuuu guys asked for it as an official Requirement ... maybe you guys could make it cool ? ? ... Just thinkin. I'm gonna go have dinner now. On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 3:57 PM Dave Jones <djo...@itconline.com> wrote: > Thinking about this a little more, I think what would be nice to have is > something along the lines of the OSA-ICC, which presents locally > attached 3270 device to the O/S, but is reachable via TCP/IP. > > We could call it the OSA-ASC and it would present a locally attached > VT220 to either Linux running native in an LPAR or to Linux running as a > guest of z/VM, also reachable via TCP/IP. > > No need to have access to the HMC and it's Integrated ASCII console. > > DJ > > --- > DAVID JONES | MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR ZSYSTEMS SERVICES | z/VM, Linux, and > Cloud > 703.237.7370 (Office) | 281.578.7544 (CELL) > > INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMPANY > > On 03.01.2021 2:00 PM, Mark Post wrote: > > On 3/1/21 3:49 PM, Dave Jones wrote: > >> Have you considered using the IBM Terminal Server for > >> zLinux? > >> The Terminal Server is part of the s390-tools package and > >> permits normal access to other zLinux guests running > >> on the same z/VM system, even if they are not > >> connected to a working TCP/IP network. This permits > >> the use of common Linux tools like vi, Emacs, and > >> nano, to be used even in the event of a network > >> failure. > > > > The caveat being that this only works after the kernel boots up to the > > point where the hvc? console(s) are available. For any problems that > > are > > really early in the boot process, this won't suffice. Once you get past > > that point, things do indeed look a lot more like "normal" to the > > typical Linux system administrator. > > > > > > Mark Post > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > > send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 > > or visit > > http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > -- Jay Brenneman ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
