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IBM Ports Linux to S/390
smoon writes "The most expensive Linux platform available? IBM appears to be working on a port of Linux to S/390." First version is running on a VM. Second version will be running on 'Bare Metal' as they call it. Pretty cool if you happen to have a 390 sitting around somewhere ;)
Didn't this get posted about 2 weeks ago?
Seriously, though, if IBM produce an official, supported version for their medium or high-end hardware, Linux will start to be taken a WHOLE lot more seriously by the pointy-hair guys.
(After all, nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM, right...? :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For, if he did, he would know, as the rest of us do, that this story was posted early last week.
Slashdot - for those that didn't get it the first time.
Can IBM support both Linux and Monterrey going forward ? Should they ?
My head is spinning.
Linux under a VM for fast porting of Linux apps I can understand -- but Linux on bare mainframe metal? I'm a big Linux fan, but there's no way Linux can be optimal in an environment like this.
Sure it's cool, but is there a point other than hack value?
Is this a publicity stunt to send the message that IBM is your Open Source Friend, or perhaps to send the message that MS is flanked on both ends?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sorry Rob, but I think this was posted a few weeks ago.
I think this is an great example of how Linux can be good for business. IBM can benefit by allowing customers to run Domino on mainframes, and the community benefits from the kernel source that IBM would release. Not only that, but IBM bolsters their image with the open source community.
As your PHB would say, "This is a win-win situation."
This sig is false.
The bad news is that it's strictly a server platform. I don't even know of a natively attached device that can serve as an X display; the 3270 display system is very much screen-oriented and block-structured, designed to have the user fill in a form and hit the ENTER key to have it all processed. They also don't handle async serial I/O worth a damn, necessitating a channel interrupt and transfer for every input keystroke. The upshot of this is that you'll run the system by telnetting into it, and if your IP configuration is hosed, you'll get to use some really horrendous tools to edit the necessary files.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I believe that this could be good for IBM and Linux.
OS/390 which runs on the S/390 platform currently has a Unix variant running along with "traditional" MVS. A cross compiler which runs Linux programs under this environment would be a tremendous advantage. It would open a lot of programs to the mainframe which would be a real big plus to IBM. As someone who's used Unix System Services, I can say it's not bad but it is definitely suffering from a lack of native applications.
I doubt IBM would sell a whole lot more S/390 boxes running Linux only. They tried something similar to this by offering a S/390 machine running OS/390 Unix System Services only. They stopped offering it because most traditional mainframe shops are not going to buy a unix mainframe at the expense of their existing programs. Buying another box for Unix is also a rather expensive alternative. Running both would definitely be a plus.
If you had read the post last time, it noted that this is merely a rumor. Now we have official word from IBM that they really are porting Linux to the S/390. If you don't like confirmation stories, filter out entire topics that you feel you don't need to hear about anyhow, or better yet, don't read Slashdot.
I have to say I share some of your skepticism.
Your's Truly,
IIRC, IBM tooted AIX as its mainframe unix for a long time. Similarly, Amdahl (RIP) was first (1981?) with a mainframe unix; they called theirs UTS. Mainframe unix is not new.
So, with Linux on "bare metal", hell, even under VM it's quick, why would IBM want to continue its own brand of unix (AIX) on any of its other platforms. If I were the folks doing AIX, I'd quickly get the CDs from cheapbytes and start hacking.
Annoying Operating System (which PF-key?)
Well, at least you can imagine the size of the Tux sticker they could slap on the side of that thing!
Reality: not much to say except "cool".
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
IBM supports TCP/IP on OS/390, and I have used a Linux system running X as an X-terminal to the "Unix System Services" facilities of such a machine.
Yes, IBM's 'native' networking doesn't support the usual cast of Unix remote devices, _but_ the newer IBM networking hardware _does_ support both SNA _and_ TCP/IP, making it easy to attach TCP/IP-enabled devices (terminals, printers, PCs, etc.) to the system. If they've moved any further ahead with Linux on S/390, I don't see any reason why you couldn't access the system from an xterm.
You certainly can do so now.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
I have been thinking about the reasons why IBM might be doing this, and came up 2 possibilities:
1. To compete with Sun's E10K's. Sun has been encroaching on the mainframe realm with these systems. E10K's support up to 64 processors, terabytes of storage and logical partitioning of hardware resources. I don't believe (you can correct me if I am wrong) that IBM has any AIX based systems on par with what Sun offers. It would allow someone a relatively easy upgrade path (at least from a systems/software view) from their AIX systems.
2. Caving in to all the Linux hype...hey it's good PR.
On a related note...
I am not totally familiar with the inner workings of X, but if a S/390 supports TCP/IP wouldn't there be the possibility of using one of these system as an application server server to graphic terminals? Much of the use of character-mode mainframe applications is software related (CICS) and not so much the limitations of the hardware and I/O.
Sheesh!
/., goto here to grab the scripts that run this sight and start your own competition. After sifting through 300+ submissions a day, you'll be singing a different tune.
And you've never been so busy that you've done something twice? Or forgotten you did it the first time? Oh that's right, {smack forhead} your so perfect that you don't want anyone to know who you are because we might fall down in worship. I just plumb forgot.
I know you where all excited to get first post, but let's get real. These people are human, and by their very nature sometimes make mistakes.
The sheer ignorance that this type of post displays is amazing.
Or if you really think you could do a better job than
Myddrin
...oh never mind... Feel free to moderate this down through the floor.. -AC
The Linux emulator makes sense. Check out their VM/ESA web page.
But on running linux as the base OS...
I remember interviewing with some OS/390 guys a while back... One of the interviewers worked in the OS messaging/IPC group. If I remember correctly, they had a very large number of people (around 100?) that did nothing but work on messaging and IPC.
The point is, OS/390 is a very very complex system for very very complex hardware. ja?
And the rumors expect to have linux ported to bare metal relatively soon? How many people would that have taken? How many years?
Here's a abbreviated list of S/390 G5/G6 Features:
Capacity Upgrade on Demand
Open Systems Adapter 2 (OSA-2)
OSA Express Express GbE
Dual cryptographic coprocessors
FICON channel 100MB/sec full-duplex
S/390 architecture
Clustered systems
Parallel Sysplex clustering technology
Sysplex Timer®
Integrated Coupling Migration Facility (ICMF)
Coupling Facility Control Code
Coupling links (HiPerLinks)
Internal Coupling (IC) Channel
Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex
Integrated Cluster Bus (ICB)
Internal Coupling Facility (ICF)
Shared ICFs and CPs
Dynamic ICF Expansion
Transparent ICF Sparing
Dynamic CF Dispatching
Enhanced Parallel Sysplex Clock Functions
VM/ESA Virtual Parallel Sysplex
To the best of my knowledge, most of this stuff is outside the scope of the linux source tree. We're talking a large amount of work here to make linux take a moderate advantage of the underlying hardware. If they've done it, more power to them. But is just seems to be rumors to me.
And what about all the OS/390 software, is that being ported to linux also? How long will that take? Or will you only be able to run Domino on it? I guess that my point here is that there seems to be a large amount of good S/390 specific enterprise software out there. To run linux as the base OS would negate the advantages and capabilities of this software.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
How is one set of code unable to run on a mainframe, and another able to do it?
Do they have to include ?
The OS the S/390 runs was unable to run on an S/390 until someone ported it, and was unable to take advantage of the features until someone coded in support.
So why can this be done with one OS and not with another? It's not like Linux has a GUI built in at the kernel level or anything.
And, I'd think conventional Linux and a mainframe OS would be more similar than the Realtime Linux someone made.
A convergence of OSes is a good thing as should be encouraged. If Linux gets properly ported to the S/390 (as in, works as well as what is there already) then a lot of that code could be folded back into the main branch, perhaps helping stability and scalability to other platforms.
Just think of the benefits of being able to take code written on a PC and transparently drop it on a mainframe. Your developers could work on PCs, testing code there and then simply by recompiling the code, make it run on a mainframe. What better way to bring legacy systems up to date?
Commercially releasing Linux on S/390 "bare metal" would reveal an awful lot of information about IBM's most lucrative proprietary technology, and it is hard to see how that risk would be justified given where Linux stands in the enterprise today.
Testing a VM version of Linux is a no-brainer, and is hardly anything to get excited about. After all, IBM has had Windows NT running on S/390 VM in its labs for years, but never saw any reason to productize it. Further, IBM long sold a version of AIX for S/390, and it was a non-starter, so why would they now start to offer Linux?
When you say (PF) key, you talking about this honking big keyboard from IBM with something like an extra set of keys to the left, two rows of function keys, and a plug similar-but-different from the AT style? I got one of those at a thrift shop and want to hook it up to my PC. Does anyone know how difficult this is, if there are any specs for the keyboard online, etc.? I got two of them, the first was broken so I put some of the cooler key-caps on my PS/2 keyboard, but I got this other one just *begging* to be used...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
The mainframe model is that I/O is made really fast by using blocking to a massive degree. Interrupts == evil; blocking == good.
The UNIX model is more oriented towards streaming; this can be mapped onto blocks, but if the blocks are real tiny, this gets real inefficient.
This is already somewhat true on a UNIX when running applications across the network; a single keystroke may initiate a couple of packets of network traffic, thereby having a single byte update result in a couple hundred bytes having to cross the net. UNIX suffers somewhat when hit by interrupt-driven programs; MVS suffers a whole lot more.
The OS/390 hardware has been tuned to do block-oriented I/O, whether we consider disk drives, printers, or terminal controllers.
This may be a neat hack; I am quite unconvinced that it will lead to a commercially viable product, and in order for it to be of any importance, it has to be commercially viable.
Countervailing consideration; if some of the following components were provided some "deep hooks" to the kernel, they could both be coded to "bare iron," and thus be fast, and harness the "blockiness" of the hardware, but also allow integration work to take place in the Linux environment:
Linux could provide a way of gluing these things to (say) a web server, and providing an easy front end to customize, whilst letting the respective components take advantage of the hardware's strengths.
A web server is also likely to represent something that can run pretty effectively on MVS.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Perhaps a dictionary should be given to some of the mods, or maybe just a link to dictionary.com.
To the best of my knowledge, most of this stuff is outside the scope of the linux source tree. We're talking a large amount of work here to make linux take a moderate advantage of the underlying hardware. If they've done it, more power to them. But is just seems to be rumors to me.
OTHO, it would be a huge advantage to IBM to make this move.
1) Having a single source base for everything (M$ has been hyping this up for Win2000, btw) from mobile to mainframe. This would let them cut down on the # (and/or cost)of developers for packages like Dominio.
2) Linux OS developers are most likely cheaper than the OS/390 experts. (There are prob. more linux devs. anyway) And a lot of the work is free (GPL'd).
3) Marketing Marketing Marketing....
4) If they can get this to market before Win2000 it pulls the feet out from under M$ for the "one source base everywhere".
5) Marketing (yeah, I know but it's a biggie...)
6) Makes them look good to the Linux community. (This seems to be becoming an important competition "Who is more Open Source friendly"...
So not only are they seeing a a cost savings (eventually), it makes them look like "the good guys," something IBM isn't used to.
Myddrin
This post does *NOT* substantiate the rumor. And the article is simply a link to the SAME article as two weeks ago.
C'mon, it's not that hard to look for rehashes. I can't believe that anyone has THAT much of a short attention span!
Isn't it great the OSS movement is giving these guys PR ammo? Oh well, at least it seems Linux is benefitting as well; it's all about mindshare.
In any case, you can be sure there won't be much Linux running on these boxen, even in VM's. AIX/Monterey is what will be running there - it's optimised to do that, and will (does?) run PPC binaries natively (see lxrun).
OS/390 wasn't ported. It's the latest version of IBM's mainframe OS's, which has roots going back into the 50's. (Earlier computers didn't really have OS's)
It might not be vastly worthwhile for them to support both, but even should this be a $100M mistake, that's not going to bankrupt them. And I don't think this would be a $100M mistake...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
> The OS the S/390 runs was unable to run on an > S/390 until someone ported it
;-)
I believe that the S/390 runs System/390.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
I think these kick just about everything else out of the water for scalability and ceiling height.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Nothing really runs on "bare metal" anymore. Even OS/390 is serviced by the microcode which is a stripped down version of VM.
As far as revealing the inner workings, if someone really wants to know that they could read the OS/390 Principles of Operations on IBM's bookmanager site. That reveals a lot on how OS/390 interacts with the hardware. From that you could learn a lot.
But I digress... I also doubt IBM will release a version of Linux without it being dependent upon another OS because of the enormous effort in a direct port. Think of all of the hardware interfaces that would need to be written. The effort would be enormous.
I bet they: 1.) port the gnu compiler and allow for direct compilation of Linux programs to work within OS/390 Unix Services, and/or 2) Offer Linux under VM as a standalone OS. VM runs other operating systems really well. Both of these would reduce the porting effort because the actual hardware would be hidden. Of course a good port would provide the S/390 platform new applications, something it needs very badly.
I find it intriguing that the rumours always fail to mention the Linux/390 site where the actual work is going on: Bigfoot-- Linux on a Mainframe. Why do the news reporters carry this as a rumour? Doesn't anyone fact check? And why does it say "IBM is doing this" ... only a small fraction of the people involved in this project are employed by IBM, its seems weird that IBM gets all the credit. Whazzup with that?
Yes, but what I mean, is that the OS didn't magically appear, ready to run a mainframe. They took the older OSes, took the parts that worked, junked the rest, and rewrote it for the new hardware.
So yes, it was written for a 390, but I highly doubt they did it from scratch.
So, at no point did a mainframe-capable OS appear out of thin air, so I see no reason why taking a scalable and robust PC OS, you can't use at least a fair bit of it in a mainframe OS. Sure, the I/O stuff, and other similar low-level bits will have to go, and be replaced with something designed for the hardware, but that happens with the same OS between different hardware anyway.
And their longstanding OS experience and the fact that they made the hardware, will let them accomplish the transition fairly easily.
IBM's never been shy about releasing documentation and architecture reference manuals from the early 360 days through the 390 days.
On the other front, moving from running under VM to running without VM isn't _that_ difficult since IBM's VM looks a heck of a lot like the real hardware (surprise!) You'd probably need to port the SVC tables or perhaps provide most of the ones that fall under "OS Simulation Services" for VM (the ones like SVC 93/94 that the TPUT macros use.)
As far as running under VM (which a native version would be able to do as well)- the thing to get excited about is being able to host Linux applications without changing environments, and indeed writing collaberative applications to talk to other VMs. That gives you a signifcant software base for the S/390 that doesn't need to be supported seperately. So, you could run a mail system, USENET, or even hand out shell prompts and not take anything more than some CPU and I/O.
It also may give IBM some extra hardware for porting projects that can run batch compiles and things pretty quickly. If the port is done well enough, it may give IBM a good internal development platform. Now all they need is a good cross-compiler for i386.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
Read the official web site Linux/390 and you will see that all the work is being done on VM and not on bare metal. Once you're on VM, bare-metal is easy but why would anyone want that?
Yes the S/390 does dupport TCP/IP
I use it daily for FTP and TELNET 3270 host access.
Plus I use ADSM for server to host back-up. Nothing like having a couple of terrabytes of DASD to back-up to with the ability to archive to automated tape library.
Technology is only a vehicle. People are the ones that drive it.
This exact same story was posted by Roblimo last week on Sat Nov 20. In that very discussion, I posted a comment detailing how this was Old News, and that Linux Today ran a related story the month before that!
For those who want all the links in one comment: The Linux Today article referenced an article in the Danish version of ComputerWorld, and the comments on LinuxToday pointed out this project's home page.
I knew something was funny when the story link for this article was black instead of green like it usually is. Can you moderate an article as redundant?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Are you malda's [boy, girl]friend or just trying to get a job ? jerk. :D
We have nothing to fear from Microsoft's threats about a single, unified Windows source base.
... Microsoft has its hands full maintaining app compatibility across multiple code bases. Microsoft has been preaching for years that Windows 2000 will be the convergence of Windows and NT for servers, workstations, and home computers. This is a lie! Microsoft continues to develop Windows 9x (under the codename Millenium) for home users. This product will probably be called something like "Windows 2000" (but without the "Professional" or "Server" suffix, just to confuse things more: same product name, different code base!) Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code slightly for Win2K Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter. Microsoft has already forked the Windows 2000 code for Win64 because the Win32 code is not 64-bit friendly. Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code yet again for Neptune, the codename for "NT Consumer" product that is to ship after Millenium (Windows 9x cum "Windows 2000 Consumer").
Everyone knows that the current Windows family is not based on a single source code base. From Windows 3.1, 95, OSR2, 98, NT, Embedded NT ("NT for Toasters"), Embedded CE, 2000, Millenium, Neptune,
The Windows source code is a brittle stack of cards. For more Windows 2000 ramblings, see Nicholas Petreley's article Will Windows NT develop into a super-OS or an unmanageable disaster?.
cpeterso
WHACK! The S/3x0 has long been in a death spiral of few apps + expensive prog'rs -> less support vis a vis other platforms -> fewer apps. But the mainframe and associated support contracts are a large source of revenue. At minimum the ability to run more apps just by recompiling the source is a huge win in preserving that revenue stream and even more so if the spiral can be completely broken. Likewise there are many universities and some businesses running on "boneyard" equipment - and paying for hardware support - but who are dropping support for the S/390 because of the software costs (the OS and the apps) as fast as they can migrate. Put a no-cost OS and a no/low cost apps on it and many of them will keep the hardware and if it performs well perhaps buy more later. IBM has to support not only multiple OS's for the 390 but also the support services software for it as well; if many of those support services can be provided by a service in a service machine in VM or an LPAR running Linux then IBM doesn't need to pay to support those services within the other operating system. Lots more. -- TWZ
The S/3x0 has long been in a death spiral of few apps + expensive prog'rs -> less support vis a vis other platforms -> fewer apps. But the mainframe and associated support contracts are a large source of revenue. At minimum the ability to run more apps just by recompiling the source is a huge win in preserving that revenue stream and even more so if the spiral can be completely broken.
Likewise there are many universities and some businesses running on "boneyard" equipment - and paying for hardware support - but who are dropping support for the S/390 because of the software costs (the OS and the apps) as fast as they can migrate. Put a no-cost OS and a no/low cost apps on it and many of them will keep the hardware and if it performs well perhaps buy more later.
IBM has to support not only multiple OS's for the 390 but also the support services software for it as well; if many of those support services can be provided by a service in a service machine in VM or an LPAR running Linux then IBM doesn't need to pay to support those services within the other operating system.
Lots more.
-- TWZ
P. S. Sorry about the dup.
Forget about the Mindcraft Benchmarks, take a look at Siemens SAP-R/3 application server. Linux outperforms all other OSs. That included all flavors of Unix.
For those of you that do not know, SAP is the most powerfull application system, ERP system availible today.
It runs on virtually any hardware, any OS and any Database.
Ever wonder what the Fortune 500 or for that matter fortune 5000(midsize) companys run for their end to end applications.SAP is it.
SAP on Linux will be a big. Right now SAP only supports RedHat6.0 on Intel (IBM, Campaq, HP and Siemens). If Compaq has any sence they will push SAP on Alpha/linux.
Why not offer better hardware to run your Enterprise than what IBM can buy from Intel? It makes perfect sence.
- The 390 has a killer instruction set for doing I/O more efficiently (with fewer CPU cycles) than any other cpu out there. Sure AIX/irix/slolaris can do XXX TB/second i/o but what good is it if the cpu is 100% busy? The mainframe can do this I/O wich the cpu 99% idle.
- The 390 allows the disk drive cables to be hundreds of meters long and so you can fill a whole room with disk. You can't do this with an SP/2. You can try using NFS disk servers, or a SAN fabric running SCSI but you'l surrender performance, or number of peripherals.
- The Linux/390 page says it all: 65536 devices and all of them busy
- LPAR allows you to boot multiple operating systems. This allows you to create test regions and production regions on the same box, and acheive uptimes that are out of the ballpark.
- You don't have to reboot the OS to add more disk or even add more CPU's. Does your favorite unix box even allow you to plug in a CPU without turning off power?
- Address spaces: the instruction set allows 16+ address spaces that all have access to priveldged (kernel) instructions. This allows kernel deamons and kernel modules to each run in thie own address space, without corrupting other parts of the kernel. They could even do an OOPS without taking down the rest of the kernel with them. Its kind of like having "capabilities" designed into the CPU instruction set. There is no other unix/risc-box on the planet that allows you to install a kernel module without compromising the security of the kernel itself. This is exactly how some recent Linux security breaches ahve occured: some cracker got root shell and installed a secret back door as a kernel module.
- The multiple-address space ability can make client-server and corba really really blaze. No other CPU out there has this ability. All the other CPU's require you to use pipes or sockets or shared mem to do stuff like this. Imagine having a 100% secure syscall without the overhead of pipes/semaphores/mutex's/shmat's!
I think that everyone forgets that there have been decades of work by really really smart people that have taken this architecture to places that no one else can yet match.P.S. lets give credit to the website where this work is happeneing: Linux/390 Its nice that IBM is hyping this, but IBM is *not* pumping actual $$$ into this, the way that e.g. SGI is pumping $$$ into Linux. They're just taking all the credit :-|
Somehow I don't think that MS has any influence on S/390 development. That computer might as well exist in a different solar system from MS. I can't see how marketing will have much effect, while Linux is everybodys favorite child now OS/390 is very well respected in the S/390 market. S/390s are used heavily in the finantial industry because they DON'T GO DOWN (Billy C. wouldn't like them). While having Linux run in a VM is VERY usefull (running Apache, Samba(!), Domino, firewall, etc with any database or backend software running on the same hardware), running Linux on the bare hardware is just a hobby toy now. That will change as Linux/390 stabilizes and IBM can offer solutions with a consistant environment from desktop PCs to Mainframes. All in all--Neato!
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Actually, I've worked a lot on 390 series machines, and in fact this architecture is one of the best documented computer systems ever produced. The IBM 390 Principles of Operation describes every detail about the hardware you would ever want to know. There aren't any "secrets" that I'm aware of.
... it's actually pretty easy to do. Of course, in order to actually run your program on the bare iron, you'd need to bring down your mainframe and dedicate it to your program, which is sort of hard to justify ... and heck ... the whole reason VM was invented was because of this problem ... so why fight it?
... At the time, all VM/CMS had was a flat filesystem with 8.8 character filenames. Ouch!
...
... in both the IBM and Waterloo C compilers. The workaround for that was to make huge #include files that mapped all of the long function names into unreadable abbreviations.
... The 390 channel subsystem is based on a very high performance model, but it would have required a nearly complete rewrite of the device driver subsystems ...
... the 360/370/390 series has a 1M segment size instead of the more common 16M segment size. This means that a full 2G address space (the 390 series has a 31 bit address space, not a 32 bit address space), would require a 8192 byte segment table for each process. The largest piece of contiguous memory Linux could serve up at the time was 4096 bytes, so I was looking at a rework of the memory management routines ... and a rework of the paging routines for the differently-sized tables ...
...
Writing software that runs on the bare iron isn't a "mysterious" process
We tried AIX/ESA back when it first came out. It was EXTREMELY inefficient, not compatable with anything else in the world, and a general loser. It deserved to die.
Back in 1993, I sat down with the Linux source and looked into doing a port to our 3090.
The biggest problems I saw right away were:
1) Lack of a tree filesystem with long names
2) Lack of a suitable compiler. IBM's C compiler wasn't up to the job. I started to compile using the Waterloo C compiler, which was a better compiler, but I then ran into
3) 8 character symbol name limitations
4) Not to mention that all my development would have been done in an EBCDIC environment, and the GCC compiler, at the time, had ASCII specific logic, and defied porting. (In EBCDIC, the letters A-Z are *NOT* contiguous, and the numbers 0-9 come after the letters)
5) The output from the IBM compiler would have been in mainframe TXT format, which is basically 80 column punchcards. I didn't see an easy way to get from that to a unix style (a.out) format.
6) Device drivers
7) Paging differences
In fact, nearly the entire hardware interface layer was different enough that it would have had to be rewritten. Things like the filesystems looked like they could drop into place without any changes
but after a couple of weeks I came to the conclusion that this was much more then a "quick hack" project, and never pursued it. Always wish I had.
No I'm just a decent human being who... /. might actually have feelings. Did you ever think of that you no-brained-yellow-bellied-couldn't-program-your-wa y-down-a-one-way-street-moron?
/Update Mode Set Flame = 1 Where User='Myddrin'/
1) Is sick and tired of your(collective) damn whining and puling about 'Oh this isn't news', 'ohhh, I'm so freaking deprived becuase someone posted the same story twice.' , 'I have no life beyond slashdot.'
2) Is getting sick and tired of seeing ignorant insults being lobbed at the people who run this site. If you don't like it, stop reading... or form some competition... if that's too much like work, or using your damn mind then shut your #$@$!n' yap.
3) Actually thinks that the people who run
4) Has some Karma to burn and feels like getting moderated down responding to scumbags like you who are sitting infront of a machine at the school library because no-one will get close enough to your stink to actually talk to you.
/Update Mode Set Flame = 0 Where User='Myddrin'/
Have a nice day...
RobK
Myddrin
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
2) RS/6000s often use SSA adapters as I mentioned, and you can use a fibre optic version of the IBM implementation to put up to 10 km between adapter and host. So you can fill whole rooms with drive boxes.
3) If you had read the article that was referenced, you would have noticed that it was talking about IBMers working on this, not the guys you mentioned in your link. The rumour that is being discussed in this story is that IBM *ARE* putting dollars into this, and that as they haven't announced this yet, they can't take any credit for it at all.
well donr on your tehnical knowledge of the S/390, but please read the posts first next time.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
ObBeowulfComment:
;)
Think of the Beowulf cluster you could run on that!
All on one physical machine!
*duck and cover*
Jeff
As noted, Amdahl was the first with a mainframe native unix with UTS. We also beat IBM to the punch on running multiple OS's on a single box. Our version is called MDF, their knock off is the LPAR facility. Amdahl is still very much with us, doing our best to keep Big Blue on the straight and narrow.
Or they could just follow this link if they don't want to go searching for it.
The Linux on the IBM ESA/390 Mainframe Architecture page has links to various documents about S/390.
It's apparently already been done. (I think S/370 support has been in there for ages; the link is to somebody offering pre-compiled binaries for OS/390 UNIX services.)
I was under the impression that the "virtual machine" that VM implemented looked rather S/3xx-ish, complete with virtual channels talking to virtual I/O devices that look somewhat like real S/3xx I/O devices.
This makes sense to me -- that once you've done the VM, the bare metal is kind of a side effect.
The point I was making was not that the VM didn't make sense -- it obviously does. It doesn't make sense to run Linux on bare metal because you'd lose access to your legacy applications, you'd have to write drivers for every weird peripheral (and GPL them), and you'd have to hope that the particular policies about things like scheduling that Linux implements work in this universe of applications etc.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To reply to this and a few follow-on comments... >Just think of the benefits of being able to take >code written on a PC and transparently drop it >on a mainframe. Your developers could work on >PCs, testing code there and then simply by >recompiling the code, make it run on a >mainframe. What better way to bring legacy >systems up to date? We can already do that with C/C++ and COBOL. COBOL's most important because that's what was/is used to create 99% of business apps on the mainframe. >OS/390 wasn't ported. It's the latest version of >IBM's mainframe OS's, which has roots going back >into the 50's. (Earlier computers didn't really >have OS's) The roots of s/390 go back to the mid 60's when IBM bet the company on s/360. Those 1950 operating systems didn't make it although one might have been used in a computerized PABX IBM were selling in the 70's. I think it was a 740 computer but ....... >I believe that the S/390 runs System/390. ;-) AFAIK, it runs MVS, VM and, possibly, VSE.
IBM's most lucrative proprietary technology is thoroughly documented and available without even a NDA. This is a result of IBM's own antitrust lawsuit many years ago, where they agreed to document all of their interfaces in order to allow competitors to sell compatible systems. If it wasn't all documented, how do you think Hitachi and Amdahl/Fujitsu could sell machines that run IBM OSes essentially unmodified?
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Because one OS relies on blocks of data, does not mean the hardware requires it, it just runs more efficiently that way (less waiting for input). Typical mainframe hardware has controllers for every device attached to the CPU, so the CPU waits for no one! Disk are on controllers, tapes are on controllers, and terminals are on controllers. Did you know that Mainframes were displaying/driving X Windows applications over 15 years ago? Remember, X Windows is data streaming out of a system in packets, and why can't a mainframe generate that data?
Neat applications are possible when you consider several interesting hardware possibilities: deskside 390 class hardware, old 370 plug-in cards for IBM PCs, and other smaller systems.
IBM has made some interesting hardware for 390 arch., and running a clean, simple, OS on that rich, rich CISC CPU would be a wonderful thing - as another poster mentioned, IBM 390-class mainframes live for massive I/O.
This is a pure gimmick if anything from some small part of IBM, if even IBM. I was talking to a very senior OS/390 consultant at IBM two days ago. and I did bring this up. The Linux inside a VM is a go, the bare metal is pretty close to impossible. Both from a technical and social aspects. Technically most of OS390 is written either in assembler or PL, the hardware on one of the mainframes is vastly different to, and superior to what Linux has ever run on. What Linux would possibely do with the optimized hardware to run VMs I have no idea. NT at least as a concept for it, UNIX has none. Socially, there is no way the majority of the 390 customers, bank, insurance comapnies etc, would even be half intrested in running a "bare metal" Linux, instead of the tried and proven OS/390. They are used to something that runs for years and years, without ever stopping. Not something like UNIX that requires maintnance all the time. Its nice to be fanantical about an OS, but I think a lot of the comments here show an extreme degree of ignorance and lack of history about the computing industry.
Are you high? Besides the fact that Linux can easily outperform NT, Linux on the S/390 is a very smart move on IBMs part. Think about all those online stock trading companies.
Most of the old-school stock trading companies that are now offereing online services have mainframes doing all the backend stuff. Get Apache (running on Linux) to run on the same mainframe and you get a very powerful combination. Add to that all those systems that handle those big customer databases, and you have an all around e-comerce solution."PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
I nod to this
This is interesting, after all Linux on a mainframe grabs my attention, but IBM have already been supplying Unix-type facilities on their machines with OS/390 System Services and OpenEdition OS/390.
Unix system services provides base UNIX services, a Unix shell interface and support for the dbx debugger.
OpenEdition was introduced in OS/390/ESA SP V4.3 and originally supported only some of the Posix standards (1003.1, 1003.1a, 1003.1c, 1003.2).
The latest version (V5.2.2) supports around about 90% of the functions required for XPG4.2 (X/Open Portability Guide).
OpenEdition includes a C Run-time library, a compiler etc. It includes access to telnet, ftp etc.
Basically IBM has (finally) realised things like TCP/IP is nicer than SNA (a.k.a Blue Glue) - which I personally can vouch for. They have changed their SNA and APPC protocols to try and emulate peerless comms instead of a hierarchical model.
Of course they also realised they need for a nice TCP/IP stack etc. Not jumping on the Internet bandwagon would have flushed a lot down the toilet.
So in fact IBM have themselvs been moving their S/390 environments towards absorbing some aspects of *nix, so I can't really see people putting Linux on the 'bare metal' instead of making use of the inbuilt Unix services.
Of course you might be trying to avoid hefty licensing fees (and who could blame you!), but I can't really see an advantage to using an S/390 in this way.
But hey! You can't deny putting Linux on a beasty mainframe wouldn't be cool....be the first on your block to own one!
How about logical partitions...
.guess mode on
IIRC VM systems can run on logical partitions, each one witha set of different resources. So, you will have a system that is running OS390 and Linux on bare metal at the same time.
.guess mode off
And the road goes ever on....
So yes, it was written for a 390, but I highly doubt they did it from scratch.
Umm...actually, yes. They did write it from scratch.
Go on /.
/., Go!
Stay non perfect.
Be a moving target.
There are enough sitting ducks out on the net.
Continue to challenge the intelligence of your readers.
Brain dead may surf elsewhere (AOL loves you all).
As long as you are are hungry, your karma will be with you.
Go
this is the same story we reviewed five days ago... LITTERALLY THE SAME LINK!!!
AS/400 emulates the 390, so it will run on both. Fun.
Really? You've seen the source for the 390 OS and all other IBM OSes, and you don't see ANYTHING in common?
It's a little hard to believe.
It does come down to a matter of faith, but I find it easier to accept that like the hardware which is in continual evolution, each machine building on the ideas of the previous, that the OS itself is based on previous versions.
Is there a place where used S/390-type hardware can be inexpensively obtained? Is there a marketplace where old used 9370 systems can be bought? Interesting as a test of concept.
Has IBM got a six nines GNU/Linux os? Yes please, two for Xmas.
And that's what the U.S. Patent Office runs as its big iron, Hitachi S/390 clones. Kind of ironic.
First, I am not a mainframer. Never was, never will be. I'm allergic to COBOL. That aside, I've worked with many former mainframers, and heard some of their war stories.
Apparently, that OS/390 was written (well, rewritten) was a selling point. IBM had problems before with an OS port (not sure when, just heard rumblings) that was either slower on the new hardware, or crashed on the new hardware or something bad.
So, for OS/390, they decided to rewrite it (re-code, re-optimize, etc.) in toto for the S/390 hardware.
Meow.
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
Tandem is the market leader in stocks NOT 390.
So maybe you're right... I'm no expert and I don't know who is the market leader but, you're missing the point.
What I'm saying is that Linux on the S/390 (and other mainframes) is a good idea... for online stock trading and e-comerce solutions and all kinds of other stuff. If IBM does it (and it actually works), then others will do it too.
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
Regarding distance between disks and servers...IBM has something called an ESCON fibre attach that can go something like 80 kilometers away. Literally! Disks in one data center direct attached to a computer in a seperate center!
Point seen...and you're right. It lets IBM customers leverage existing hardware under long-term contracts and existing staff to do new "internet" stuff without screwing over the existing business applications.
And as someone else said, with SAP (et al) announcing Linux versions, it makes a very nice way to transition from a proprietary mainframe application to a new proprietary but externally supported SAP application.
Meow
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
That's what I'd like to see -- a Linux distro from IBM. Many of my programmer friends were using OS/2 before it declined, and it was a nice product.
Or HP. Or Sun. Or SGI (the debian project notwithstanding). Maybe even MS, since they would not *really* be able to control the API.
I'm really disappointed with the current crop of distros, given what they *could have been*. I was blown away by the Corel demo at Comdex, and hope they do well -- I don't see how they couldn't.
Hello, IBM -- More profesional quality distros, please!!
Yes, I am replying to my own post, to add something to it.
I originally intended for comment #53 to be funny and informative. Funny, because here we have a whole article that fits a -1 moderation category, and informative, for the links.
I suppose it is somewhat redundent, but as I pointed out, the whole article is. I think moderating me down to zero was a little uncalled for, but who am I to argue with Slashdot?
In any event, in no way did I intend to insult or attack the the two Robs and the rest of the Slashdot masters. I realize they are human and make mistakes. I think laughing at the mistakes (not the people, mind you) is a great way to releave stress, and that was part of the intent of my post. If I offended anyone (and I suspect I did, given the -2 moderation I got), I apologize.
Cheers,
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
See above. Probably not too useful, unless one had several AS/400 boxes that were no longer in use. Though I suppose the bogomips-per-kWh of power would be kinda expensive...
If you read that article youll find its all speculations. No hard facts.
Now I dont happen to know for shure that theyre not developing it, but I was over there at the development section for the S/390 applying for a job less than six months ago. And believe me, they told me a lot about what they were doing.
The were looking for people with Linux and Java experience, but not for the S/390 itself. They have a Thinkpad thats sort of built into the main machine and being used as a controller (to boot up the mainframe and to monitor it etc.).
Theyre are moving that thing from OS/2 to Linux and Java, which is no big deal since its just another PC. Thats not to be confused with the real machine, which is an altogether different issue.
Id say it is highly doubtful. To make Linux work on their mainframe would require a complete rewrite, they might as well develop a new OS from scratch.
Besides the performance gain for this machine lies in its tailored applications. OK so it takes longer to do that. But why would anyone want to run a slow emulation on his expensive hardware? Besides, companies take much longer to upgrade even windows boxes, they dont install the latest hype everyday like you freaks. They take 2 to 3 years. Why should they care if porting SAP to the S/390 takes a little longer?
Use your brain people, think (different).
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
S/390 systems can be (and usually are) divided into multiple logically independent machines called LPARs. Each runs its own OS. So a S/390 owner could easily fire up a new LPAR to run Linux/390 on say 10% of "the bare metal" while running production under OS/390 on the rest of the machine. So Linux/390 doesn't have to be able to exploit all the smarts that are built into the hardware. It could give the S/390's users access to the large and growing range of apps that run under Linux. And if they run X Stations then they can fire up X Server apps under both Linux/390 and OS/390 on the same computer at the same time. Kind of mind-blowing.
This is the first thing I've seen publicly announced from IBM about Linux interoperability. Watch this space...
;)
S/390's are awesome. You want one of these. No, not one, many!
Now, I may be biased becauase I help design them
The following trace is from my IPLing Linux on Princeton's VM box yesterday. I don't have a root file system set up yet, so it bombs kind of early. But you can see what the first part of the boot sequence looks like: (I've added <br> tags to preserve the formatting)
ipl 191
Linux version 2.2.1 (root@cheapo.rvdheij.iae.nl) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990 314 (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #58 Tue Nov 23 15:31:32 CET 1999
SAPL booting from VMLINUX MODULE dated 991129 152545
Command line: root=/dev/mem
ramdisk_cmsfile=0191:root.disk
register eckd0 at major=60 i_dev=0
Device 9 is console (5, 1)
register eckd1 at major=60 i_dev=0
register eckd2 at major=60 i_dev=0
register eckd3 at major=60 i_dev=0
register eckd4 at major=60 i_dev=0
register eckd5 at major=60 i_dev=0
vm_load_ramdisk()
Failed to load ROOT DISK (rc=1)
exit vm_load_ramdisk()
trap init with storage key=0
enter time init
exit time init
vid3270_putcs 1 chars at (0,0):
vid3270_putcs 1 chars at (0,0):
vid3270_putcs 79 chars at (0,1):
Console: mono vid3270 80x24
Calibrating delay loop... 1710.49 BogoMIPS
trap init with storage key=6
Memory: 9264k available (524k code, 356k data, 32k init)
Init Ramdisk: 0k [00000000,00000000]
kmem_create: Illgl flg 500 - signal_queue
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
i370_kernel_thread
i370_sys_clone flags=0xf00
i370_copy_thread, usp=0xa1fe8
i370_copy_thread: finished swapper pid=1 regs=000fc764
i370_sys_clone(): after do_fork, res=1
i370_kernel_thread(): return from clone, pid=1
task switch swapper/0 -> swapper/1 PSW 0x3680000 0x80014716 cpu 0
current sp=0xa2420 next sp=0xfc828
i370_sys_clone(): after do_fork, res=0
i370_kernel_thread(): return from clone, pid=0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
i370_kernel_thread
i370_sys_clone flags=0xf00
i370_copy_thread, usp=0xfc5e0
i370_copy_thread: finished swapper pid=2 regs=000f888c
i370_sys_clone(): after do_fork, res=2
i370_kernel_thread(): return from clone, pid=2
Starting kswapd v 1.5
i370_kernel_thread
i370_sys_clone flags=0xf00
i370_copy_thread, usp=0xfc5e0
i370_copy_thread: finished swapper pid=3 regs=009de88c
i370_sys_clone(): after do_fork, res=3
i370_kernel_thread(): return from clone, pid=3
vid3270_putcs 1 chars at (0,0):
vid3270_putcs 79 chars at (0,1):
Console: switching to mono vid3270 80x24
Keyboard hardware init
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
VFS: Cannot open root device 00:00
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00
HCPGIR450W CP entered; disabled wait PSW 000A0000 8000DEAD
The next question is, why would you ever want to run Linux on the bare metal?
You wouldn't.
At least, not if you had a real S/390.
But for those of us who don't, or who find it inconvenient to get to one, there's Hercules.
So if Linux/390 runs, even poorly, under Hercules (i.e., on the bare iron), I don't have to either work under x3270 on an actual mainframe, nor do I have to build a cross-compiling GCC to do development and porting on the Linux/390 platform.
Of course it'd be nice if IBM would start distributing evaluation, software-only versions of VM so I could load VM on Hercules and then Linux under VM. But now I'm just fantasizing.
Adam
While I've had some headaches fighting with SNA, and I'll be the first to admit I don't know everything about it, I'm led to believe that SNA offers a lot of QOS features missing from IP.
--
The answer is simple.
/390-port has nothing to do with this "open" port.
... it runs.
The IBM
And believe me
I already bootstraps from tape.
No more fiddiling around with disk-images.
sorry, but this time I have to stay anonymous.
(I don't want to loose my job)