[Scottish] For comparing VM technologies: VMKNOPPIX released

[Andrew Back]

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Dan Shearer wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 11:31:52AM +0000, Andrew Back wrote:
>> But where is Linux/390 running under VM on hercules on Linux? :oP
>
> Can't help with the VM bit (for most people licensing is a problem
> there) but I'll happily help people who want to add Linux/390 native
> under Hercules on this image. It's less difficult than the strangeness
> of it would seem to indicate. You really don't have to worry about the
> fact that a 390 (or, more like, a 64-bit zSeries) doesn't have a bus in
> the normal sense. Or what the "31-bit" name in the 390 architecture
> means. Mostly it is just Linux with a funny looking main machine
> console, and you can get a kick out of goingcat /proc/cpuinfo :-)

Yes, I think I was just being silly. You can get hold of a really old VM, 
from days before IBM copyrighted software. But requires hercules to act as 
a System/370 and presents 370-like VMs which are 24 bits IIRC, and thus 
have no Linux support.

> Comments:
>
>  - all the others in the image are high-performance, or claim to be
>    (Hercules isn't particularly efficient despite being very solid,
>    and besides all the others are implemented in a like-on-like manner
>    to maximise performance

I doubt anyone would want to use hercules in production. Maybe they do...

>  - on the other hand, Hercules implements up to 4CPUs, which the others
>    can't, so perhaps people would find this useful for testing. Not
>    sure how that fits with the goals for VMoppix. If that matters.
>
>  - anyway, it's fun

It is indeed. Although I seem to be currently obsessed with running ye 
olde VM and equally antique MVS under it at the moment (all on hercules). 
Which it has to be said there is little point to... Well, aside from 
marvelling at MVS revelations such as "bsppilot has terminated due to an 
abend".

Andrew