This is a good idea, imho. Right now, as I understand things, the main
driver of the z architecture growth is Linux based workloads, so the
more we ("we" == IBM) can make the z platform behave like the other
platforms, the easier it will be for IBM to sell z boxes into
distributed-oriented sites. Robert's pints "a" and "b" address this
explicitly, and it's just another step in the evolution of the
mainframe.
Maybe we could try to hold a BoF about this topic at the upcoming VM
Workshop? Robert, are you planning on attending?
Take care.
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 03.02.2021 3:25 PM, Robert J Brenneman wrote:
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 <[email protected]> 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
>
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