| OpenSolaris for System z | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Sine Nomine Associates |
| OS family | OpenSolaris |
| Working state | defunct |
| Initial release | 7 October 2008; 17 years ago (2008-10-07) |
| Supported platforms | IBM System z |
| Official website | OpenSolaris for System z |
| History of IBM mainframe operating systems |
|---|
|
OpenSolaris for System z is a discontinued[1] port of theOpenSolaris operating system to theIBM System z line ofmainframe computers.
OpenSolaris is based onSolaris, which was originally released bySun Microsystems in 1991. Sun released the bulk of the Solaris system source code in OpenSolaris on 14 June 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.[2] The project was namedSirius (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 theGartner Data Center Conference inLas Vegas, Nevada in late 2007, Sine Nomine demonstrated OpenSolaris running on IBM System z underz/VM. It was there that David Boyes of Sine Nomine stated that OpenSolaris for System z would be available "soon."[3]
At theSHARE conference on 13 August 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."[4]
In October, 2008, Sine Nomine Associates released the first "prototype" (it lacks a number of features such asDTrace,Solaris Containers and the ability to act as anNFS server) of OpenSolaris for System z to the public.[5] OpenSolaris for System z has a project page at OpenSolaris.org.[6] OpenSolaris for System z is available for download at no charge, and is governed by the sameopen source license terms as OpenSolaris for other platforms. All source code is available; there are no OCO (object code only) modules.
The port usesz/Architecture 64-bit addressing and therefore requires anIBM System zmainframe. Because the port depends on recently defined z/Architecture processor instructions, it requires aSystem z9 or later mainframe model and will not run on older machines. It also will not run on the release version ofHercules mainframe emulator, the needed changes are included in the SVN version 5470 of Hercules. It also requires theparavirtualization features provided byz/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.[7] On 18 November 2008,IBM authorized the use ofIFL processors to run OpenSolaris for System z workloads.[8]
The Register reported in March 2010 an email from an insider saying that:[1]
The SystemZ port of Solaris is dead. Oracle pulled all plugs and refused to further help the authors to help. Critical parts are closed parts of libc.so.1, the core user land library which has closed source parts. Oracle now refuses to give precompiled binaries of newer versions of the closed parts to the SystemZ port community, effectively ending this port because the missing bits cannot be replicated or bypassed.
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