Hercules and Slackware (slack/390) – Part 5
…Continuing from Part 4
Getting ready for our first IPL
Yes, we’re really almost there 
1) Checking the virtual network adapter
There is still one small problem.
Hercules emulates a network adapter, but of course it only exists virtually. In the hercules.cnf file we defined that is uses /dev/net/tun
This is a virtual network tunnel used in many emulators and VPNs.
Check on your host system if you have the /dev/net/tun device. If you don’t, you can dynamically load the kernel module for it:
# modprobe tun
Instead of loading it manually after every boot, you can add it to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local script or any other way you prefer.
2) Starting Hercules
Change to your (install) directory and start hercules from the command line:
# cd (install)
# hercules
You’ll see the Hercules command console we saw in part 1 of these posts, and if everything worked out fine, you should see these lines:
... HHCDA020I ./dasd/3390.SLACK.0120 cyls=3339 heads=15 tracks=50085 trklen=56832 HHCDA020I ./dasd/3390.SLACK.0121 cyls=3339 heads=15 tracks=50085 trklen=56832 HHCLC073I 0F00: TAP device tap0 opened ... Command ==>
The two lines showing the DASDs tell us that both files were found without problems.
The third line shows us that the ‘tap’ adapter was found as well.
3) IPLing into the kernel
Now we’re ready for our first IPL (Initial Program Load, or ‘boot’ of the mainframe).
At the Hercules ‘Command ==>’ prompt, type:
ipl c
and Enter.
- ipl is the command to do the Initial Program Load
- c is the device we will load our initial program from (remember we defined 000c as our virtual card reader in hercules.cnf)
A lot of text will scroll by, just as when we boot our Linux desktop.
When the ram disk is loaded, the text will pause while the contents is being uncompressed:
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
When the network is being configured, you will see this message:
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Starting the Slack/390 S/390 initrd to configure networking, version 0.71 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Afterwards, the network is tested by pinging the local (emulated) adapter, the gateway and the name server.
Then the DASDs are connected and several file system modules are loaded.
If everything works fine, you’ll see the following message:
4) Testing the network and connecting through telnet
Open a second console on your host and try to ping your new mainframe:
$ ping -c 3 192.168.1.162
It should respond normally, so let’s connect to it with telnet:
$ telnet 192.168.1.162
The result should be:
This is just like booting a Slackware CD or DVD, just a bit different 
Next post: formatting and partitioning our storage…
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 22:54 and is filed under Hercules, Linux, Slack/390, Slackware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Dutch guy living in Brazil. Has worked in the IT business since it was invented (well, almost...). Interests: Slackware, Lego, Star Wars.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:48
First off, Phenomenal walkthrough!!!
One comment on this page: using the LCS vs. CTCI adapter, I had to manually "type up" the ethernet adapter tap0 on the Host immediately after seeing the "Starting the Slack/390 networking" message. (ifconfig eth0 20.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up), otherwise the the host side connector would never come up.
I also had to enable ip-forwarding: "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward", and I setup nat: "iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE", in order to get the slack-390 to finish it's network testing.
August 3rd, 2009 at 13:45
You're right about these extra steps. Since I use this box for various other virtual machines (w/ qemu), I had already setup ip forwarding.
Thanks for the reminder!
February 8th, 2011 at 18:32
Hey Niels. Great blog BTW. I have managed to get Slackware S390 working once before under Hercules but I’m trying it again and are having head scratching problems. I have tried the extra steps mentioned by Robert above but still no joy – I am forever getting networking problems when the install tests the IP addresses like this :
Pinging the eth0 interface
PING 192.168.1.162 (192.168.1.162): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.162: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.7 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.162: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.162: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.6 ms
— 192.168.1.162 ping statistics —
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.3/1.2/2.7 ms
Pinging the gateway
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Network is unreachable
Pinging the DNS server(s)
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Network is unreachable
I cannot ping all the interfaces needed to make this work.
Correct the problem and try again.
root@herc-slack:/#
Any tips are much appreciated (if you still check your comments here that is).
Cheers,
BgEddy
February 8th, 2011 at 21:21
Hi,
Yes, I still read these comments
Did you setup the hercules.cnf file with the network adapters?
With the right hercules configuration and the steps Robert mentioned it really should “just work”…
Niels
February 9th, 2011 at 10:59
Yes – I have setup hercules.cnf currently contains this :
———————————————————————————————-
MAINSIZE 256
NUMCPU 1
OSTAILOR LINUX
PANRATE SLOW
ARCHMODE ESA/390
# reader
000C 3505 ./rdr/vminstall.image-2.4.26.gcc-3.3.4.img ./rdr/parmfile.txt ./rdr/initrd.gz autopad eof
# dasd
0120 3390 ./dasd/3390.SLACK.0120
0121 3390 ./dasd/3390.SLACK.0121
# network
0F00,0F01 LCS -n /dev/net/tun 192.168.1.162
———————————————————————————————-
and just for completeness – here’s my rdr/parmfile.txt
———————————————————————————————-
ramdisk_size=22528 root=/dev/ram0 ro ip=off
DASD=120-121
HOST=herc-slack.hn:eth0:192.168.1.162:1500
NETWORK=192.168.1.0:255.255.255.0:192.168.1.255:192.168.1.1
DNS=192.168.1.1
SEARCHDNS=hn
LCS=0xf00,1
CHANDEV=noauto;lcs0,0xf00,0xf01
QETHPARM=add_parms,0×04,0xf00,0xf01
———————————————————————————————-
I’m really glad you keep up with the comments here – thanks for the reply.
February 9th, 2011 at 12:58
Hi Neil – I’m sorry for cluttering up the blog with my comments but just to let you know – I have installed Hebe and now I an running the install in that and everything seems to work. Not sure what I was doing wrong before but now all seems good – the install is running now. So I now have ArmedSlack running in Qemu and soon hopefully will have Slack/390 under Hercules – very cool Slackware overdose! Thanks again for the help.
BgEddy
February 9th, 2011 at 15:28
Hi,
Good you got it to work
I have the same collection: Slackware64 / ARMedslack (SheevaPlug + Qemu) / Slack/390 (Hercules) !
Niels