OpenSolaris for System z

OpenSolaris for System z
OpenSolaris for System z
Company / developer Sine Nomine Associates
OS family OpenSolaris
Working state Prototype
Initial release October 7, 2008; 3 years ago (2008-10-07)
Official website OpenSolaris for System z

OpenSolaris for System z is a distribution of the OpenSolaris computer operating system designed to run on the IBM System z line of mainframe computers. OpenSolaris is an open source project created by Sun Microsystems to build a developer community around Solaris technology.

Contents

History

OpenSolaris is based on Solaris, which was originally released by Sun in 1991. Sun Microsystems released the bulk of the Solaris system source code in OpenSolaris on June 14, 2005, which made it possible for developers to create other OpenSolaris distributions. Sine Nomine Associates began a project to bring OpenSolaris to the IBM mainframe in July, 2006.[1] The project was named Sirius (in analogy to the Polaris project to port OpenSolaris to PowerPC). In April, 2007, Sine Nomine presented an initial progress report at IBM's System z Technical Expo conference.

At the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in late 2007, Sine Nomine demonstrated OpenSolaris running on IBM System z under z/VM. It was there that David Boyes of Sine Nomine stated that OpenSolaris for System z would be available "soon."[2]

At the SHARE conference on August 13, 2008, Neale Ferguson of Sine Nomine Associates presented an update on the progress of OpenSolaris for System z. This presentation included a working demonstration of OpenSolaris for System z. During this presentation he stated that while OpenSolaris is "not ready for prime-time" they hoped to have a version available to the public for testing "in a matter of weeks rather than months."[3]

In October, 2008, Sine Nomine Associates released the first "prototype" (it lacks a number of features such as DTrace, Solaris Containers and the ability to act as an NFS server) of OpenSolaris for System z to the public.[4] OpenSolaris for System z has a project page at OpenSolaris.org.[5] OpenSolaris for System z is available for download at no charge, and is governed by the same open source license terms as OpenSolaris for other platforms. All source code is available; there are no OCO (object code only) modules.

The port uses z/Architecture 64-bit addressing and therefore requires an IBM System z mainframe. Because the port depends on recently defined z/Architecture processor instructions, it requires a System z9 or later mainframe model and will not run on older machines. It also will not run on the release version of Hercules mainframe emulator, the needed changes are included in the SVN version 5470 of Hercules. It also requires the paravirtualization features provided by z/VM; it will not run on "bare metal" or in a logical partition (LPAR) without the z/VM hypervisor at Version 5.3 level or later. Also, because OpenSolaris uses a new network DIAGNOSE instruction, PTF VM64466 or VM64471 must be applied to z/VM to provide support for that instruction.[6] On November 18, 2008, IBM authorized the use of IFL processors to run OpenSolaris for System z workloads.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ IBM Expresses Interest in OpenSolaris for System Z Project
  2. ^ Open Solaris on System Z demo part III, YouTube Video
  3. ^ Ferguson, Neale (2008). OpenSolaris on System z. SHARE Summer 2008, San Jose, CA 
  4. ^ Sipples, Timothy (2008-10-16). "OpenSolaris for System z Now Available". http://mainframe.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/opensolaris-for.html. Retrieved 2008-10-16. 
  5. ^ "OpenSolaris Project: Systemz". http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/systemz/. Retrieved 2008-10-17. 
  6. ^ "OpenSolaris for System z". http://www.sinenomine.net/opensolaris. Retrieved 2008-10-16. 
  7. ^ "Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) authorization is expanded to include the OpenSolaris operating system". 2008-11-18. http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/5/897/ENUS108-875/ENUS108-875.PDF. Retrieved 2008-11-19. 

External links

v · d · eSolaris
Technologies
Doors · DTrace · IPMP · MPxIO · SMF · snoop · Solaris Containers · Crossbow · Solaris Cluster · Trusted Solaris · ZFS
OpenSolaris
BeleniX · Illumos · MilaX · Nexenta OS · OpenIndiana · OpenSolaris for System z · SchilliX
Stub icon This Unix-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.