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IBM

Free Unixen On RS/600 37t? 14

Posted by Cliff from the ports-for-obscure-hardware dept.
solice asks: "Does anybody out there know if there is a BSD or Linux port that will run on an IBM RS/600 37t? It has an MCA bus and a POWER chip(not power pc)? I got this great unix box and no OS. Help!" Is this just an AIX-only box?
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Free Unixen on RS/600 37t? More

Free Unixen on RS/600 37t?

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  • Used copies of 4.1.x (which would be an awful lot faster than 4.3.x on older hardware) go for about $15 or so if you can find them.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • ...and doesn't support MCA

    From the Documentation/mca.txt file:

    MCA support is enabled using the CONFIG_MCA define. A machine with a MCA bus will have the kernel variable MCA_bus set, assuming the BIOS feature bits are set properly (see arch/i386/boot/setup.S for information on how this detection is done)

    I.e., MCA support is there, but so far for x86. I guess that's one of the things that should be moved out of the arch/ directory.

  • You can get a two user AIX 4.3 from IBM direct for $50. It's 3 cd's for the OS and a bonus pack with a bunch of software like db2, netscape (server and navigator), etc.

    A linux port is beginning at http://www.sjdjweis.com/linux/rs6k/ [sjdjweis.com], but there's very little there so far.

  • It's only non-root users, so you can telnet to it and log in directly as root (ugh) and the su - me.

    I also read in the aix newsgroup that they have changed their policy to allow unlimited use, so you can use smitty to increase the maxusers legally.

  • I don't find 4.3 to be slower than previous versions of AIX 4. In fact, I'm seeing the best performance out of 4.3.3 these days.
  • The POWER instruction set is actually not that different than PowerPC. You can compile something on any one type of RS/6000 and have it run on any other type. The reason for this is that there is set of instructions (called common) that will run on POWER, POWER2, PowerPC, POWER3, and everything else they've put in the RS/6000.

    I think the biggest problem with making a working non-AIX flavor of *nix on these older RS/6000s is the lack of documentation on the firmware.
  • No. I have a behemoth (pardon the pun of those of you who know what machine I'm talking about) of a 340 RS/6000 sitting on my desk at work we have to use AIX 3.x because off all the old software we nolonger have installation media. It was set up SOOOOO badly. I wish maybe that the harddrive would finally die and we could reinstall everything correctly.

    I scoured the net looking for something besides AIX to run on this beast, but to no avail. The problem with the POWER chips is that they are not chips as much as they are chipsets. There are about 4 or 5 chips that are on a "processor card" in this machine. REAL UGLY. Plus they don't implement either a sub- or super- set of the PowerPC instruction set, but something completely different that was kind of merged into what was to become the PowerPC.

    Ichhh!

    A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
  • IBM has come out on Open Source Side of late. They're porting jfs (ther journaling file system) to linux and they help with the S/390 port and are supposedly going to do the RS/6000 power chip line RSN. There's some info on http://www.ibm.com somewhere and there's been a discussion for the last week in comp.unix.aix (check it at deja.com). In short I think you'll find that at the moment you've got an AIX only box, but I'm sure the community would love some help with a port :)

    Chris
  • >However, this is in the "Suggested Ports" >category.

    This has (or at least a preposed RT port) been in the NetBSD "tree" since at least 95. I know because I've had an RT sitting around doing nothing for about that time waiting for this to finish. I know I should get in there and do it myself but there's just never enough hours in the day.

    Chris
  • You could have just gone to yellowdoglinux.com and linuxppc.com and checked for yourself. It's really not that difficult.
  • Linux doesn't run on POWER (though a port from PowerPC might be possible), and doesn't support MCA. However, NetBSD [netbsd.org] seems at least interested in running on RS/6000. From http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/:

    IBM RS/6000 (MCA based)

    The pre-PowerPC RS/6000 machines were based on the POWER and POWER2 architecture, with Microchannel (MCA) bus. There is i386 MCA bus code in NetBSD tree now, which would help with the MCA aspect.

    However, this is in the "Suggested Ports" category. So if you've got some time on your hands and like to hack stuff, you've got a great project. Otherwise you'll have to run AIX until someone gets around to doing it.

    First post? :P
  • To increase the number of concurrent non-root users, either: a) invoke the command "chlicense -u NN" where NN is some number greater than 2; b) edit the file "/etc/security/login.cfg" and change the variable definition "maxlogins=2" to "maxlogins=NN" where NN is some number greater than 2; c) use "smitty" or "wsm" to accomplish the same thing.
  • By the way, when you change the number of concurrent non-root users using either of the three methods mentioned in the previous post, you must reboot your system for this change to take effect. The command "shutdown -Fr" issued as root, of course, would be just the ticket.
  • Well, the MCA code has been in the kernel since 2.2. We've had IBM MCA machines running since 1996, kernel 1.3 or so. So the problem is not the IBM MCA architecture, although the RS/6000 is a little different. The problem lies more in the older PowerPC chips. Maybe the Linux/MCA and Linux/PowerPC people should get together. Darren Wright, dwright@dgmicro.com http://www.dgmicro.com Home of Linux/MCA

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