z/MOE - Hercules based OS

[Keven Tipping]

Greetings to all.

Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.

Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules OS". I
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.

I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of Linux
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the name- z/
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
would contain the following features:

- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the buttons in
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and upgrade the OS
itself

There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be comprised of a
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored in /
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write the entire
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot from that,
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of things only.

Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my Mac Pro
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.

Cheerio.
-KT

[Tim Pinkawa]

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.
Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules OS". I
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of Linux
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the name- z/
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the buttons in
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and upgrade the OS
itself
There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be comprised of a
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored in /
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write the entire
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot from that,
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of things only.
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my Mac Pro
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.
Cheerio.
-KT

I would be interested in contributing. I did some work on my own last
summer trying to setup a VMware appliance with Hercules, h3270, and
the MVS Turnkey system. I got it working, but if I recall, there was
an issue using h3270 as a 3215 master console, it may be working now.
What is the goal of z/MOE, is it a LiveCD-like environment, a blackbox
appliance operating system where the user doesn't deal with Linux, or
a starting point for a Linux install?

Tim

[Keven Tipping]

Post by Tim Pinkawa
What is the goal of z/MOE, is it a LiveCD-like environment, a blackbox
appliance operating system where the user doesn't deal with 
Linux, or a starting point for a Linux install?

Blackbox, though it could be burned to a CD just as easily, since z/MOE itself (save for non-volatile configuration files, stored on a disk) is read-only.

The whole point of z/MOE is that there is no OS, metaphorically speaking. You install it on a PC, and now it's a zSeries Mainframe. It's that simple. Think of it as a "Mainframe Bootloader"- it boots a PC to the point that it operates like a Mainframe, ready for the primary OS.

Linux exists as a sort of "low level HMC" allowing for access to system configuration and such, and Hercules provides the "high level HMC" allowing for access to the actual Mainframe HMC panel. But the last thing I want is for this to be another massive Linux distribution. I guess you could think of it more like "VMware ESX" for Mainframes- in the way that VMware is booting a Linux kernel for hardware access and configuration, and then booting the VMKernel to provide virtualization parallel to the Linux system.

I was hoping to build z/MOE on top of a modular Linux setup that I was working on a while ago, but more about this later if there's a demand for z/MOE. Long email short, ideally the base z/MOE system (emulator, network utilities, EVMS utils, etc) would be about 35MB (w/o HTTP or Web UI support!)- and additional software packages would come as single-file compressed Squash-FS image(s) which are handled by the z/MOE base system for adding features and functionality (for example- the web based h3270 emulator would require four additional files- Apache.sqfs, Java.sqfs, Tomcat.sqfs, and h3270.sqfs).

-KT

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Pinkawa <timpinkawa-***@public.gmane.org>
Date: Sunday, December 23, 2007 7:00 pm
Subject: Re: [hercules-390] z/MOE - Hercules based OS

Post by Tim Pinkawa

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.
Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules

OS". I

Post by Keven Tipping
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution

of Linux

Post by Keven Tipping
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the

name- z/

Post by Keven Tipping
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the

buttons in

Post by Keven Tipping
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and

upgrade the OS

Post by Keven Tipping
itself
There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be

comprised of a

Post by Keven Tipping
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored

in /

Post by Keven Tipping
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write

the entire

Post by Keven Tipping
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot

from that,

Post by Keven Tipping
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of

things only.

Post by Keven Tipping
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my

Mac Pro

Post by Keven Tipping
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.
Cheerio.
-KT

I would be interested in contributing. I did some work on my own last
summer trying to setup a VMware appliance with Hercules, h3270, and
the MVS Turnkey system. I got it working, but if I recall, there was
an issue using h3270 as a 3215 master console, it may be working now.
What is the goal of z/MOE, is it a LiveCD-like environment, a blackbox
appliance operating system where the user doesn't deal with
Linux, or
a starting point for a Linux install?
Tim

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Harry Goldschmitt]

You might want to look at a small X server so x3270 remote will work.
I saw recently, that you can build one with a footprint of under a
megabyte.

Harry

Post by Keven Tipping

Post by Tim Pinkawa
What is the goal of z/MOE, is it a LiveCD-like environment, a blackbox
appliance operating system where the user doesn't deal with
Linux, or a starting point for a Linux install?

Blackbox, though it could be burned to a CD just as easily, since
z/MOE itself (save for non-volatile configuration files, stored on a
disk) is read-only.
The whole point of z/MOE is that there is no OS, metaphorically
speaking. You install it on a PC, and now it's a zSeries Mainframe.
It's that simple. Think of it as a "Mainframe Bootloader"- it boots
a PC to the point that it operates like a Mainframe, ready for the
primary OS.
Linux exists as a sort of "low level HMC" allowing for access to
system configuration and such, and Hercules provides the "high level
HMC" allowing for access to the actual Mainframe HMC panel. But the
last thing I want is for this to be another massive Linux
distribution. I guess you could think of it more like "VMware ESX"
for Mainframes- in the way that VMware is booting a Linux kernel for
hardware access and configuration, and then booting the VMKernel to
provide virtualization parallel to the Linux system.
I was hoping to build z/MOE on top of a modular Linux setup that I
was working on a while ago, but more about this later if there's a
demand for z/MOE Long email short, ideally the base z/MOE system
(emulator, network utilities, EVMS utils, etc) would be about 35MB
(w/o HTTP or Web UI support!)- and additional software packages
would come as single-file compressed Squash-FS image(s) which are
handled by the z/MOE base system for adding features and
functionality (for example- the web based h3270 emulator would
require four additional files- Apache.sqfs, Java.sqfs, Tomcat.sqfs,
and h3270.sqfs)..
-KT
----- Original Message -----
Date: Sunday, December 23, 2007 7:00 pm
Subject: Re: [hercules-390] z/MOE - Hercules based OS

Post by Tim Pinkawa

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.
Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules

OS". I

Post by Keven Tipping
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution

of Linux

Post by Keven Tipping
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the

name- z/

Post by Keven Tipping
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the

buttons in

Post by Keven Tipping
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and

upgrade the OS

Post by Keven Tipping
itself
There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be

comprised of a

Post by Keven Tipping
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored

in /

Post by Keven Tipping
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write

the entire

Post by Keven Tipping
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot

from that,

Post by Keven Tipping
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of

things only.

Post by Keven Tipping
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my

Mac Pro

Post by Keven Tipping
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.
Cheerio.
-KT

I would be interested in contributing. I did some work on my own last
summer trying to setup a VMware appliance with Hercules, h3270, and
the MVS Turnkey system. I got it working, but if I recall, there was
an issue using h3270 as a 3215 master console, it may be working now.
What is the goal of z/MOE, is it a LiveCD-like environment, a blackbox
appliance operating system where the user doesn't deal with
Linux, or
a starting point for a Linux install?
Tim

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
http://www.hercules-390.org
Yahoo! Groups Links

[Enrico Sorichetti]

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
.... snip snip
Cheerio.
-KT

Hi Keven!

not to cool Your enthusiasm, but some time ago there was a thread
about DSL ( Damn Small Linux ) with almost the same objective

regards and season greetings

enrico sorichetti

[azavedo]

Hi! Some time ago, Tome Joao created a Bootable DSL Hercules CD.

Instructions for building the same are available in 'Remastering.pdf'
document in the files section. Remastering Damn Small Linux with
Hercules s390 Emulator - HOWTO

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
.... snip snip
Cheerio.
-KT

Hi Keven!
not to cool Your enthusiasm, but some time ago there was a thread
about DSL ( Damn Small Linux ) with almost the same objective
regards and season greetings
enrico sorichetti

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[jmonatsys]

Post by Enrico Sorichetti
about DSL ( Damn Small Linux ) with almost the same objective

And there is the IMPL CD (based on DSL and Knoppix) by Tim Holloway.

Cheers,

Jantje.

[Roger Bowler]

Post by Keven Tipping
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of
Linux (under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the
name- z/Mainframe Operating Environment.

...

Post by Keven Tipping
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system-

I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of Linux
driving it. But creating a new distribution is a non-trivial task, and
most people seemed to prefer Hercules running on their regular desktop
machine. But even if I'm in the minority, I still consider that
Hercules deserves to run on its own dedicated machine :-)

Regards,
Roger Bowler
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
Hercules "the people's mainframe"

[Enrico Sorichetti]

Post by Keven Tipping
... snip
I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of Linux
driving it. But creating a new distribution is a non-trivial task, and
most people seemed to prefer Hercules running on their regular desktop
machine. But even if I'm in the minority, I still consider that
Hercules deserves to run on its own dedicated machine :-)
Regards,
Roger Bowler
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
Hercules "the people's mainframe"

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
has what it looks like good docs on how to proceed
... choosing the right set of packages might be the most difficult step

[Harry Goldschmitt]

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
... snip
I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of Linux
driving it. But creating a new distribution is a non-trivial task, and
most people seemed to prefer Hercules running on their regular desktop
machine. But even if I'm in the minority, I still consider that
Hercules deserves to run on its own dedicated machine :-)
Regards,
Roger Bowler
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
Hercules "the people's mainframe"

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
has what it looks like good docs on how to proceed
.. choosing the right set of packages might be the most difficult step

I've got some experience with LFS from the IPCop project
<http://www.ipcop.org>. It's non-trivial, but it can be done. The
devil is always in the details, like how are you planning on
configuring the network and the hostname? Let me know if you want
some help.

Harry

[Keven Tipping]

Like how are you planning on configuring the network and the

hostname?

Via a startup script in /etc/init.d... Same thing for networking. I've
already got scripts to handle that from a previous project. Though
that can only happen after the disks are mounted and live, so that the
said configurations can be read from disk (since z/MOE is sitting on a
read only initramfs image).

I thought about using LFS, but then I remember the horror stories
associated with it.

My previous embedded projects (which were based on uClibc, though this
one is using Glibc) were all built via Gentoo and it's portage system,
since emerge only requires a few extra options to point it at a
specific install location rather then / (ie, "ROOT=/target/ emerge -
avkN mypackage"). The base system is basically just baselayout-lite,
busybox, bash, nano, Glibc, dhcpcd, evms-utils, and hercules. There's
no included init or init scripts with baselayout-lite, so that's where
the fun starts.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll have time to work on this a little later in the
week. I might have something booting in VMware by Sat (~40MB disk
image), though I'm not sure right now as VMware Fusion is seriously
broken (deadlock in the disk backend- hangs the entire machine) so I
don't have safe access to my dev environment.

I *am* however seriously considering to just write my own common Web
UI, which hooks into Hercules, offers package management for z/MOE, an
SSH2 applet console, and a web-enabled 3270 emulator (rather then
installing X on z/MOE for x3270). It would be a lot of work, but it
would also be the thing that sets z/MOE apart from any other
distribution.

-KT

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
... snip
I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of

Linux

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
driving it. But creating a new distribution is a non-trivial

task, and

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
most people seemed to prefer Hercules running on their regular

desktop

Post by Enrico Sorichetti

Post by Keven Tipping
machine. But even if I'm in the minority, I still consider that
Hercules deserves to run on its own dedicated machine :-)
Regards,
Roger Bowler
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
Hercules "the people's mainframe"

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
has what it looks like good docs on how to proceed
.. choosing the right set of packages might be the most difficult

step
I've got some experience with LFS from the IPCop project
<http://www.ipcop.org>. It's non-trivial, but it can be done. The
devil is always in the details, like how are you planning on
configuring the network and the hostname? Let me know if you want
some help.
Harry

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[halfmeg]

Post by Keven Tipping
... snip
I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of
Linux driving it.

<snip>
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
has what it looks like good docs on how to proceed
... choosing the right set of packages might be the most difficult step

Not if there is discussion on what exactly is needed.

Ignoring the OS one would wish to use with a HAL ( Hercules Appliance
Linux ) as opposed to a HAW ( Hercules Appliance Windows ), what
packages or utilities are needed?

Phil - FUSE i suppose so that NTFS data could be R/W

[halfmeg]

Post by Roger Bowler

Post by Keven Tipping
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of
Linux (under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the
name- z/Mainframe Operating Environment.

...

Post by Keven Tipping
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is
that it's going to want a dedicated system-

I for one would welcome such a system. I always envisaged that
Hercules would run on a dedicated PC with a minimal version of Linux
driving it. But creating a new distribution is a non-trivial task, and
most people seemed to prefer Hercules running on their regular desktop
machine. But even if I'm in the minority, I still consider that
Hercules deserves to run on its own dedicated machine :-)

SMP or non-SMP. I've already done the later. Takes slightly less
than 32MB for USB stick/pen/flash drive containing bootable LINUX and
2 pack MVS system.

Phil - I was waiting on SMP kernel to be compiled into the disto

[halfmeg]

<snip>
SMP or non-SMP. I've already done the later. Takes slightly less
than 32MB for USB stick/pen/flash drive containing bootable LINUX and
2 pack MVS system.

Forgot to give yall a starting point. It takes a little work to
accomplish ( compile sfs is seperate and you would have to copy
Hercules executables into the system ). As the author states:

"The concept is to have a "single application Linux".

http://208.109.22.214/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14918&sid=ec3020222c793623fc5d1b53c767d5fd

Phil - merry christmas for those who celebrate it

[Lindy Mayfield]

Why not take the latest MVS that is public domain and move it forward somewhere? Like MVS 3.8j to a public domain mainframe OS that may rival z/OS?

Of course I'm not saying to do this, I'm actually asking, "Why not?"




-----Original Message-----
From: hercules-390-***@public.gmane.org on behalf of Keven Tipping
Sent: Mon 12/24/2007 2:45 AM
To: hercules-390-***@public.gmane.org
Subject: [hercules-390] z/MOE - Hercules based OS

Greetings to all.

Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.

Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules OS". I
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.

I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of Linux
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the name- z/
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
would contain the following features:

- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the buttons in
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and upgrade the OS
itself

There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be comprised of a
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored in /
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write the entire
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot from that,
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of things only.

Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my Mac Pro
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.

Cheerio.
-KT

[M. Khalid Khan]

Interesting idea, probably the enormity of the task is holding the adventurers back. May be organizing MVS3.8j sources and creating a working system from source could be the first step. Oh well ...
Khalid



----- Original Message -----
From: Lindy Mayfield
To: hercules-390-***@public.gmane.org ; hercules-390-***@public.gmane.org
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 6:23 PM
Subject: RE: [hercules-390] z/MOE - Hercules based OS


Why not take the latest MVS that is public domain and move it forward somewhere? Like MVS 3.8j to a public domain mainframe OS that may rival z/OS?

Of course I'm not saying to do this, I'm actually asking, "Why not?"


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[Kevin Monceaux]

Post by Keven Tipping
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of Linux
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the name- z/
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the buttons in
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and upgrade the OS
itself

I've thought of trying something similar several times myself. One of
these days I might even find a spare PC and one of those round tuits and
try it. Well, I suppose I could try it under VMware, in which case I
wouldn't need a spare PC. I'd only need to find a round tuit.

If I ever do I'd personally prefer to skip all the web based stuff and go
with c3270. If I were to do so I'd probably shoot for something along the
lines of:

- Perform a minimal CRUX, my current favorite distro, install to a
small root partition.

- Get c3270, Hercules, and a Hercules guest OS installed and tested.

- Set up inittab with a default runlevel of 3 that would:

- Run the Hercules HMC on VC12 at runlevel 3

- Have the hercules.rc file switch to runlevel 4, and pause for
an appropriate amount of time.

- Have inittab set up so that when switching to runlevel 4 it runs
c3270 on the "standard" VCs to connect to Hercules.

- After the appropriate pause to give time for the c3270 sessions
to start up, the hercules.rc file would IPLs the guest OS, and the
user would see the mainframe OS console on VC1.

This is, of course, all speculation. I have not attempted any of this to
see if it would actually work.


Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!

[Kevin Monceaux]

Post by Kevin Monceaux
This is, of course, all speculation. I have not attempted any of this to
see if it would actually work.

Okay, the setup I described in my previous post is possible. I have a
basic such system with a generic Turnkey3 system working under VMware.
At the moment when one boots the system it looks something like:

- Usual Linux kernel messages/startup messages appear on the console.

- A login prompt appears very briefly(I haven't figured out why that's
appearing yet. The way it's set up it shouldn't.)

- c3270 starts and displays the Hercules splash screen while Hercules
pauses to give all the c3270 sessions time to start.

- The MVS specify system parameters prompt comes up and one can IPL MVS
as usual. At this point 010 is on tty1, 011 is on tty2, 0C0-0C2 is
on tty3-tty5, 009 is on tty6, and the Hercules HMC is on tty12. One
can switch between them using the usual linux <alt>+F1, etc., shortcut
keys.

How does something like that sound for a dedicated Hercules box?



Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!

[Kevin Monceaux]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, Kevin Monceaux wrote:

After a little more tinkering I have the process streamlined a little.
For the moment I have it set up so that Hercules starts on tty12 when
runlevel 3 is entered and then all the agetty processes that run the
various c3270 sessions on tty1 - tty6 are fired off from the hercules.rc
file instead of from inittab, so there's no need for Hercules to pause and
wait, and no switching runlevels. As I said this on a Linux distro, CRUX,
installed under VMware, so it's probably not as fast as it would be on
bare metal. From initial boot until the MVS system parameters message
appears on the console takes about 45 seconds. This is starting to get
interesting.


Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!

[M. Khalid Khan]

Sounds very interesting. Can you make it available for download - an install CD or even a VMware image ?
Khalid


----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Monceaux
To: Hercules 390 E-Mail List
Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: [hercules-390] z/MOE - Hercules based OS

This is, of course, all speculation. I have not attempted any of this to
see if it would actually work.

Okay, the setup I described in my previous post is possible. I have a
basic such system with a generic Turnkey3 system working under VMware.
At the moment when one boots the system it looks something like:

- Usual Linux kernel messages/startup messages appear on the console.

- A login prompt appears very briefly(I haven't figured out why that's
appearing yet. The way it's set up it shouldn't.)

- c3270 starts and displays the Hercules splash screen while Hercules
pauses to give all the c3270 sessions time to start.

- The MVS specify system parameters prompt comes up and one can IPL MVS
as usual. At this point 010 is on tty1, 011 is on tty2, 0C0-0C2 is
on tty3-tty5, 009 is on tty6, and the Hercules HMC is on tty12. One
can switch between them using the usual linux <alt>+F1, etc., shortcut
keys.

How does something like that sound for a dedicated Hercules box?

Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Kevin Monceaux]

Post by M. Khalid Khan
Sounds very interesting. Can you make it available for download - an
install CD or even a VMware image ? Khalid

If there's interest in it I can certainly give it a try. It's still rough
around the edges. I've only put one evening's work into it. And, with a
complete Turnkey3 MVS system installed it's a hefty VMware image to
download. There are several options I can think of that would help with
that. And there are some other details I could use some input on. So, if
there is interest I think it would be best for me to start another thread
to discuss those possibilities. I've been hijacking this thread long
enough. And on that note, I'd like to sincerely thank Keven. His post
inspired me to finally try something I've been pondering for a long time.



Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!

[Tome Joao Azavedo]

Hi Kevin

Recently, there was a forum thread concerning the availability of a
Remastered Damned Small Linux containing Hercules, C3270 and Netcat
utility. I also posted a file "remastering.pdf" so that others could
cook Live DSL CD's with their own specifications. Here is the thread
link ...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/message/52036

The remastering PDF is here ...

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/wJNzR0Rx2-v99UuyLnVLihND9HkwCoEN8UdT4pcWXcflLJBY-VmavTC4mLyZ_T_KBLuebntEkhjzGf1OGnzFONBTLF-g/remastering.pdf

I think what you would like to do has more to do with automation
involving scripting. I would strongly suggest using (perhaps) DSL as
a base and then using your own start up scripts to get Hercules
running with whatever configuration. You could also write scripts to
get 3270 and other applications up and running. Uni*es shell
scripting, as you know, is very powerful and the results usually quite
gratifying.

The DSL distro is small (around 50Mb) but has X windows, FluxBox
window manager, Mozilla FireFox browser, Dillo, etc. It's quite
functional as a standalone distro. But enough plugging DSL.

The reason I suggest DSL is because of it's small size and
functionality. No where like the 256Mb you wrote about. If you
really want to supe up your distro, I would strongly recommend that
you recompile the Linux kernel (2.4.26 with DSL 3.3) for the
particular hardware that you have. The vanilla DSL distro is meant to
run on many systems and includes SMP support, too. My remastered DSL
is made up of a recompiled kernel for just my particular hardware and
also a very specific initrd with a modified linuxrc script to suit my
needs. Needless to say, it is much smaller and faster than the
official offering. My system is an IBM ThinkPad 380Z WITHOUT a hard
disk (yeah, it went kaput), Pentium II 266MHz CPU and 96Mb RAM.
Luckily it's got bootable CD support as well as USB 1.0. My
customised Hercules DSL flies and I run MVS Turnkey 3.8 off a USB
stick. But I have not automated Hercules execution as I also use this
laptop for many other purposes.

If you compile your own specific Linux kernel and also get rid of
softwares that you do not need (getting rid of X windows as you
suggested, for example), you can have a Live Hercules CD that is
around 30Mb (probably much less) without MVS Turnkey 3.8, of course.
If you include a ready to run MVS 3.8 on the CD you should have a
fully functional standalone system to play around with.

Cheers

Tome Joao Azavedo

Post by Keven Tipping
Greetings to all.
Recently stumbled across Hercules, great program- haven't had this
much fun working with an open sourced program for quite some time.
Anyways- I just wanted to gauge the interest in a "Hercules OS". I
might just do it for my own uses anyways, but I'd like to know if
anyone else is interested in such a system.
I was thinking of creating a seriously cut-down distribution of Linux
(under 256MB) specifically for booting Hercules, hence the name- z/
Mainframe Operating Environment. Off the top of my head, the distro
- Hercules 3.05
- EVMS for local RAID management (software)
- h3270 for HTTP-based 3270 Terminal Emulation
- Web based SSH applet (for Linux access & service)
- New Hercules HTTP user interface (I can hardly read the buttons in
the current UI at the top)
- Custom web portal to branch out to HMC/h3270/SSH, and upgrade the OS
itself
There would be no X or graphical environment, and likely no package
management either. The entire thing would basically be comprised of a
kernel, initramfs, and a squashfs for the OS data, all stored in /
boot. The rest of the system (disk wise) would be whatever Hercules
needs it for. Technically, it would be better to just write the entire
distro to a IDE flash drive or a SATA<->CF adapter, boot from that,
and all the local disks are used for the mainframe side of things only.
Anyways- is anyone interested in this? The only issue I see is that
it's going to want a dedicated system- and figuring that my Mac Pro
only pulls about 75MIPS, I'm guessing it would require a reasonably
fast PC to achieve any decent speed.
Cheerio.
-KT