Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD s/390 Port in the works
brad-x writes: "It appears that an enterprising gentleman has taken the time to port FreeBSD to the s/390. It needs some work yet, as his project page suggests, but if he makes it happen it will definitely be very cool. Check it out!"
Since the S/390 is a pretty parallel architecture...does this mean that the FreeBSD kernel is getting better at SMP?
Does it run with more than 2 processors on the 390?
Is the 2 CPU limitation an X86-only thing that I'm ignorant of (quite possible)?
That's not to say that I don't love the BSD's, but they do have (or maybe they had) their limitations.
-Turkey
-Turkey
The more platforms supported, the merrier it will be.
Although, I don't expect to see FreeBSD on anywhere near the same number of platforms as NetBSD.
I'd like to see FreeBSD 5 running on RS/6000 hardware... That would be nice
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
The thing I think is interesting about this port is that it puts freebsd on the s/390 while NetBSD isn't. They do say a port of NetBSD to the s/390 would be relatively staightforward though.
The page for the port says it's being done on Hercules, which is a System/390 and z/Architecture simulator; the Hercules page claims it runs on Linux and 32-bit Windows, but it can probably be made to run on UNIXes other than Linux as well, assuming it doesn't Just Work out of the box.
There is a FreeBSD port of the emulator in /usr/ports/emulators/hercules; if you're running another BSD flavor and it doesn't have this port you'll likely have an easy time importing it.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
to compile the linux kernel on this thing.
to have a Beowolf cluster -- oh never mind!
Before people get too excited about topics such as SMP, kernel threads, and I/O devices -- it only partially boots on a mainframe emulator. This is a VERY LONG WAYS OFF from asking, "so where can I download the ISO images?".
Um, it's just one guy doing this, so far and he'll do whatever interests him, obviously. If all free software people did what was "needed" and not what was personally interesting to them, commercial OS's would be extinct by now.
You would almost certainly never see it replace OS/390 or z/OS. It might, however, be an option to run on an LPAR (logical partition) or as a guest under IBM's VM, which allows other operating systems to run beneath it.
It's doubtful, though. IBM has officially blessed Linux for mainframes, and it's unlikely that any organization would give up the support they can get for that to run *BSD, regardless of the merits.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
Indeed. Look at all the poor free software that there are multiple, independent, poor versions of. (e.g. DVD/mpeg players, web browsers, word processors, financial software, file managers). If people had coordinated, with a goal of producing what was needed, instead of each writing their own software independently because of what they personally wanted, the free solutions would be so vastly superior to the commercial solutions that only the free ones would survive. Unfortunately, this almost never happens.
the Hercules page claims it runs on Linux and 32-bit Windows, but it can probably be made to run on UNIXes other than Linux as well, assuming it doesn't Just Work out of the box.
As noted, it's in the FreeBSD packages tree. I plan to get it running on MacOS X by the time the next release is out, now that I've got a Mac to run it on. It will run on most Unixoid OSes with tweaking to remove Linux-specific SCSI tape and TUN/TAP code.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Baloney. There are 58 ports of NetBSD. Linux can't even come close.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
The question is not whether *BSDs are dying, but rather whether S/390s are dying.
Unix machines have had more processing power than S/390s for years now, but they did commonly not support block-mode terminals (like S/390's 3270), and therefore it was difficult to implement host-/terminal-based applications on unix-systems without causing too much network traffic.
AS/400's (aka iSeries 400) have got 5250-terminals, which are quite the same as the 3270's, but a few years ago AS/400's did not have as much processing power and/or disk capacity as mainframes. Recent AS/400's are mainly based on pSeries-like hardware, with the same powerful POWER4 processors, lots of cache memory and lots of main storage (RAM).
Since the biggest AS/400s are now more powerful than the biggest z/900 but also are more mainframe-like than the pSeries, it could be possible, that IBM is going to replace the S/390's with the more modern AS/400's.
You Jerk!
A close aquaintence of mine WROTE
386BSD!
Actually, if people wern't such idiots,
386BSD would be popular!
But, I must admit, other *BSD's than
386 are very crappy.
P.S. Do not insult 386BSD! Its the other
*BSD's that are bad!
Hardware is what you kick, Software is what you curse.
Quick!!! Look!! Hell is freezing over!
You sure seem to have a hatred for *BSD. You remind me of those guys that post on stockmarket boards trying to drive the price down. Please tell us what you prefer. Linux? The bandwagon jumpers OS of choice? I'd rather run *BSD than dirty Linux distros any day.
the BSDs love you they are your friends (at least freebsd anyways) =*
this is my sig which appears at the bottom of my post