Hi at all

I'm trying to install oracle db server on linux OS.

I'm following this official guide: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/...112/e47689.pdf.

In the Package Requirement section at chapter two it talk about of s390 and s390x linux package versions.

Can anyone tell me what means (and what are) s390 and s390x

thanks in advance.

If you don't know it you most likely have none of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S390

As far as I understood, googling on internet, s390 refers to IBM mainframe which have a particular architecture identified by 31-bit-address/32-bit-data. Moreover, machines supporting that architecture have been sold under the brand System/390 (S/390).

Then, subsequently, IBM renamed S390 in System z.

So, from what i have said above, Linux system on System z is a 32 bit distro developed suitably for that hardware architecture.

So, s390x is the 64 bit distro of linux for System z.

It's right?

As far as I understand it, yes.

What? You never got to use one of those machines? What? You don't use one today?


//WHATSLNUX JOB (123456,789012)
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=IEBGENER
//SYSIN DD *
OOH, THEN YOU DID MISS SOMETHING!
/*

Sh*t... I can still write that stuff...

Well, you can "pooh pooh" a mainframe architecture all you want to ... unless you see one, liberated from the weight of IBM's ponderous legacy operating systems, running Unix, UTS, or Linux.

yeah, mainframes are old-hat. some of the systems in my corporation are so old the latest entry to the update log for tso changes is 07.19.1997 version 3.4.

... but that system is "still going-g-g-g-g-gg..."

And folks 'round here think that only Unix/Linux has "uptime!"

People put-up with computers like these because they're like a really great-big freight locomotive. Kinda ugly, kinda smelly, makes a lot of noise, requires air conditioning, but if you've got a lot of revenue freight to move from here to there, it's just what the doctor ordered. It's really an entire ecosystem of highly specialized hardware.

Sometimes, I just look at those "racks and racks" of "little pee-cee" computers, all strung together with miles of Cat-5 cable, and just chuckle at the sheer absurdity of it all. "How many individual points-of-failure do I see here?" Nope, sometimes a great big box, preferably minus the MVS and TSO, is exactly what you need. It can run Unix/Linux natively, often in a virtual-machine partition, and when it does ... !! (Hint: don't be a' starin' at the starting gate... look at the finish line.)

well the only reason they are still going is because we put millions (billions ?) of dollars into it every year.

and we are too lazy to start the transition to a more modern system (+ hardware/software costs).

in business the golden rule is dont disrupt the status quo.

(similar to the reason we wouldnt transition to open-source desktop software -- even if product x is better/cheaper/faster/... all the business people would need to re-write their macros so its easier not to migrate).

Nope, gotta disagree with you on this one, friend.

The "mainframe computer" concept obviously started out of necessity: we needed "computers" in the 1960's, and it wouldn't be until the mid-1990's before it became feasible to compress a similar architecture onto a single silicon-chip. (However, in the late-1980's, IBM did manage to implement the S/370 architecture more-or-less on a single card that would fit into an IBM PC ...)

But the "mainframe computer" idea did not die thereafter, and there actually is a justifiable reason for it, if one will but recognize that the "mainframe" of yesteryear bears zero resemblance to the "mainframe" of today.

Today's mainframe is a tightly-coupled, very-highly redundant, highly-specialized computing cluster. It has many CPUs, many specialized I/O channels, massive amounts of memory, and ... hardware redundancy. You can take very large chunks of "the guts of the thing" out, and totally replace them, while the rest of the system continues to run. And, it all comes from one vendor, who knows it quite thoroughly.

"Kindly excuse the fact that it still runs MVS, and TSO, and CICS, and god-knows what-else from the 1970's ..." except that it still does. Please feel free to run your future alongside your past.

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