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01/02/2003 - Matt Zimmerman reported that he had updated his pre-built Debian/390 CCKD image from Debian 3.0r0 to 3.0r1. The image is intended for use with Hercules.
http://people.debian.org/~mdz/hercules/

01/02/2003 - Mark Post contributed the URL to an article that discusses the concerns businesses have about using Open Source software. He commented that "for a site that declares itself to be about the "Open Enterprise" it's ...surprisingly rational..."
http://www.theopenenterprise.com/story/TOE20021004S0001

01/07/2003 - Rich Smrcina contributed his "Linux for S/390 Technical Discussion" to the site. It's been placed on the presentations page.
http://linuxvm.org/Present/misc/linux.tech.discuss.pdf

01/08/2003 - In response to a question about web-based 3270 emulators, Terrence Dombrowski recommended Passport from Zephyr Corporation. He added that there is a freely downloadable trial version. Frank Chiavoni recommended MochaSoft's Mocha TN3270.

For a non-web-based product, Lionel Dyck recommended Vista tn3270 from Tom Brennan Software.
http://www.zephyrcorp.com/
http://www.zephyrcorp.com/web-terminal-emulator/index.htm
http://www.mochasoft.dk
http://www.tombrennansoftware.com/

01/08/2003 - In response to the umpteenth question about a better/faster way to search the mailing list archives, Mark Post said that he would put a gzipped copy of each month's archives on this web site. They can now be found on the archives page.

Daniel Jarboe also commented that there is a unofficial searchable archive that lags behind the list traffic a little, but the searches run much faster.
http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.32864
http://linuxvm.org/archives/
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-390@vm.marist.edu/index.html

01/08/2003 - Mark Post noticed that the iplvol script that used Rob van der Heij's method of determining what device number a Linux/390 system was IPLed from, wasn't working on one of his 2.4 systems. Some investigation showed that the problem was because the kernel on that system had been written out using silo and not zipl. Running zipl corrected the problem. The zipl program uses the eckd0 bootstrap program, which is necessary for the subchannel address to be stored.
http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.32903

01/09/2003 - The 3270 emulator discussion wandered off into a discussion of whether or not a local non-sna 3270 controller was needed to install z/VM. The answer was a qualified yes. Romney White mentioned IBM's 2074 product "...which allows you to Telnet to your host and look like a locally attached 3270..." John McKown replied that a cheaper solution is a product from Visara.
http://www.visara.com/

01/09/2003 - In response to a question about web site creation software (as opposed to web page editors) Alan Cox mentioned Typo3, as well as Red Hat's CCM/CMS as being Open Source packages for the creation of web sites. Paul Williamson also recommended "wml," the Website Meta Language, which the web site describes as a "free and extensible Webdesigner's off-line HTML generation toolkit for Unix."
http://www.typo3.org/
http://thewml.org/

01/12/2003 - Mark Post reported discovering that Sine Nomine Associates is now providing commercial support for SUSE and Red Hat Linux/390, as well as continuing their support for Debian Linux/390.
http://www.sinenomine.net/linuxsupport.php
http://linuxvm.org/Info/support.html

01/13/2003 - In response to a question of how to browse the Linux kernel source without downloading the entire source package, Alan Altmark recommended the Linux cross-reference. It contains everything that has been integrated into the official source tree.
http://lxr.linux.no/source/

01/14/2003 - In response to a question about what people were using to monitor their Linux/390 systems, Ronny Funk of BMC suggested that people should take a look at their product line. Tzafrir Cohen recommended MRTG, and wondered if anyone on the mailing list had any good example mrtg.cfg files. Jae-hwa Park provided a pointer to some working examples.
http://www.bmc.com/products/products_services_detail/0,,0_0_0_48,00.html
http://www.mrtg.org/
http://www.laukas.com/mrtg/index.php

01/14/2003 - The question of how to take good backups was raised again. Patrick Fitzsimmons of Innovation Data Processing recommended using Innovation's FDR/Upstream product. It can provide both file level, and DRA backups.
http://www.innovationdp.fdr.com/ups.cfm

01/14/2003 - paultz contributed a link to an Enterprise Systems Journal story titled "Linux Headed for the Data Center," that references a Goldman Sachs report. The report, titled "Fear the Penguin" indicates "that as Linux continues to mature... the open source operating system will play a more important role in enterprise data centers."
http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=378

01/15/2003 - Mark Post reported an InfoWorld article that talked about Merrill Lynch deploying Linux on both Intel and the mainframe.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/01/10/030113ctlinux_1.html

01/15/2003 - Neale Ferguson reported an Internet.com news article that said AMD and IBM had become Technology Partners of the United Linux consortium. Being Technology Partners will provide them with "participation in the UnitedLinux Technical Advisory Board and its committees, pre-release access to UnitedLinux deliverables, the right to propose enhancements for consideration by the UnitedLinux Technical Steering Committee and joint marketing activities."
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1569711

01/15/2003 - In response to a request for documentation on configuring sendmail, Tzafrir Cohen (sarcastically) referred to a postfix example. The response isn't helpful to sendmail users, but is for postfix users.
http://www.postfix.org/faq.html#example_config

01/17/2003 - Jim Rich of BEA reported that BEA had "just completed certification of our WebLogic product for Red Hat, and that is the only environment that will work for WebLogic." He also said that downloads page would be updated in a day or so. He also recommended looking at IBM's web page that documents what platforms their version of Java have been tested on.
http://commerce.bea.com/downloads/weblogic_mainframe.jsp
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/linux/tested.html

01/20/2003 - Neale Ferguson reported an article on IBM's plans to introduce "a pre-configured and tested Linux on mainframe installation." The package would contain:

SUSE SLES7
WebSphere Application Server AE V4.0.4
IBM Directory Server (LDAP) version 4.1
One year of software support and IBM Global Services LinuxLine Support
Optionally, installation and customization support from IBM Global Services

http://www.internetweek.com/breakingNews/INW20030119S0001

01/22/2003 - Responding to someone who was having problems connecting to a 2074 using x3270, Paul Winder said that he had success doing just that using version 3.2A1, and that anything newer should work.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/7814/

01/22/2003 - Robert Matthews forwarded the URL to a Financial Times story about the threat Linux can pose to various segments of the Operation System market segment. The original URL requires registration, but an alternate was found.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory...
http://www.mindspring.com/~eswanson/articles/linux-ft.htm

01/22/2003 - Dave Jones reported an article/press release about Marist College working with IBM "on a project to provide virtual Linux servers on an IBM mainframe to each of Marist's computer science students, giving them a secure, independent virtual computer for each student to use throughout their undergraduate program.
http://www.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss?MenuChoice=pressreleases...

01/24/2003 - James Causey contributed a link to a very funny (because it's largely accurate) Flash animation about Super Villains switching to Linux.
http://www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux/

01/27/2003 - In response to someone who was asking about tools to clone Linux/390 images, Bill Beinert recommended looking at Levanta from Linuxcare (now Levanta). Avinoam Hirschberg of Aduva, mentioned their tool that is marketed by BMC named Deployment Manager for Linux. Dave Jones mentioned the cloning tool by Tung-Sing Chong that IBM uses to demonstrate the concept a trade shows, and is now freely available.
http://www.linuxcare.com/products/index.html
http://www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/CHONGTS/

01/27/2003 - Rick Troth announced that CMSFS version 1.1.6 was available. This version includes the fix from Richard Hirst. Although the user mode utilities seem to work fine, the kernel driver is still not reliable.
ftp://ftp.bmc.com/pub/cmsfs/cmsfs-1.1.6.tar.gz

01/27/2003 - During a discussion about various methods of backing up date, Matt Zimmerman recommended rdiff-backup, from the Debian distribution:
"rdiff-backup is a script that backs up one directory to another. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, symlinks, special files, permissions, uid/gid ownership (if it is running as root), and modification times. Finally, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted."
http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.33470

01/29/2003 - In response to a question about using virtual HiperSockets, and the need for broadcast capability, Adam Thornton reiterated that HiperSockets don't support broadcast, and if that is needed, you should use Virtual OSAs (QDIO) instead. "Both are supported in z/VM 4.3. The only difference is whether you

CP DEFINE LAN OWNER LANID TYPE HIPER or
CP DEFINE LAN OWNER LANID TYPE QDIO"

http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.33515

01/29/2003 - paultz reported an article that talked about the US Department of Homeland Security switching its web site to Oracle running on Linux. "Note there is no comment as to whether it is related to recent SQL woes."
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/it_infra/21000-1.html

01/30/2003 - Matt Zimmerman contributed a link to a set of Debian web pages that provide a tremendous amount of information on installing the Debian S/390 distribution.
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/s390/install.en.html

01/31/2003 - Mark Post reported an article on the addition of NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) to the Linux 2.5 development kernel. Mark said "While this may or may not have much applicability to Linux/390, per se, it's another Enterprise feature that's being introduced to the operating system that will make it more likely for Linux in general to wind up being used in big/critical application. Increasing awareness and acceptance of Linux in general will possibly result in the same for Linux/390."
http://news.com.com/Linux+gets+high-end+server+boost/2100-1001_3-982651.html

01/31/2003 - Neale Ferguson contributed a link to an article about SUSE and IBM winning a contract from the Kommunales Rechenzentrum Niederrhein (KRZN), a public sector data center serving more than 60 counties in the northwestern section of Germany, to run mainframe Linux.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1500494,00.asp

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