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The following recipe should allow you to use OS/390 to prepare a volume to IPL Linux for S/390 in an LPAR. This is an alternative for creating an IPL tape for your first IPL.

Note: The bootstrap only works for ECKD devices (i.e. 3390 or 3380 on 3990 Control Unit).

  1. Up/download the following files to your TSO userid:
  2. Take one of the volumes you are going to use in your Linux LPAR and vary it online on OS/390. The remainder of this process will erase the current contents of the volume.
  3. Adapt the sample job according to your installation needs:
  4. Run the job to assemble the bootstrap, write a new VTOC on the volume, write the bootstrap records and copy the 3 Linux datasets to the volume.
  5. Vary the volume offline on OS/390 and IPL it in your Linux LPAR. The prompts will show on the HMC. Remainder is as documented for the IPL from tape.
Although you did an IPL from DASD, the device is not usable in Linux as you have it now. You probably want to run dasdfmt against it and use it as your root device for Linux. YaST will run silo to make the device suitable for subsequent boots.

If you prefer to do your own job you can also start with the bootstrap source and do it as fits. When you use other names for the 3 datasets you will have to adjust the definition in the bootstrap source as well. The datasets must be on the IPL volume, must not be migrated and must consist of just a single extent. The bootstrap does not care about record length or block size, but the dataset must be F or FB. When you edit the parmfile, notice that the kernel only uses the first 896 bytes of it.

rvdheij@iae.nl