OpenSolaris for System z is a discontinuedGavin Clarke, 29 March 2010
Sun's IBM-mainframe flower wilts under Oracle's hard gaze
''The Register'' port of the OpenSolaris operating system to the

IBM System z IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers. In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family now includes the newest mod ...

line of

mainframe computers A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

History

OpenSolaris is based on Solaris, which was originally released by Sun 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. 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 Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its client ...

Data Center Conference in

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...

in late 2007, Sine Nomine demonstrated OpenSolaris running on IBM System z under

z/VM z/VM is the current version in IBM's VM family of virtual machine operating systems. z/VM was first released in October 2000 and remains in active use and development . It is directly based on technology and concepts dating back to the 1960s, wi ...

. It was there that David Boyes of Sine Nomine stated that OpenSolaris for System z would be available "soon." At the SHARE 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." In October, 2008, Sine Nomine Associates released the first "prototype" (it lacks a number of features such as

DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released und ...

Solaris Containers Solaris Containers (including Solaris Zones) is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, first released publicly in February 2004 in build 51 beta of Solaris 10, and subsequently in the fi ...

and the ability to act as an NFS server) of OpenSolaris for System z to the public. OpenSolaris for System z has a project page at OpenSolaris.org. OpenSolaris for System z is available for download at no charge, and is governed by the same

open source license An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compa ...

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

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 Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the ...

mainframe emulator, the needed changes are included in the SVN version 5470 of Hercules. It also requires the

paravirtualization In computing, paravirtualization or para-virtualization is a virtualization technique that presents a software interface to the virtual machines which is similar, yet not identical, to the underlying hardware–software interface. The intent o ...

features provided by

; it will not run on "bare metal" or in a logical partition (

LPAR A logical partition (LPAR) is a subset of a computer's hardware resources, virtualized as a separate computer. In effect, a physical machine can be partitioned into multiple logical partitions, each hosting a separate instance of an operating ...

) 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. On 18 November 2008, IBM authorized the use of IFL processors to run OpenSolaris for System z workloads.

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information te ...

reported in March 2010 an email from an insider saying that:

References

External links

OpenSolaris Project: System z
(source code and project home)
Sine Nomine Associates

OpenSolaris for System z Distribution
(binary code download site) {{Solaris OpenSolaris IBM mainframe operating systems VM (operating system)

History

See also

References

External links