NORDAUTO

NORDAUTO EXEC runs in VM/CMS and gets you started quickly with NORD Linux using no other media. It pulls a Linux kernel and a small memory based root filesystem directly from the web. Between these two files, it sandwiches a boot parameter file, feeding all three  to “spool space” on your z/VM system. Finally, it attempts to IPL the (virtual) card deck.

NORDAUTO EXEC requires CURL REXX to perform the web content retrieval. You will need to download both scripts from the web and upload them to your CMS virtual machine. Once you have both NORDAUTO EXEC and CURL REXX, there are no additional files to manually download/upload. Create <vmid> NORDAUTO (a boot parameters file) as described below.

For simplicity, most devices are at fixed addresses in this release. The system disk (also the boot disk) is at 1B0. The root disk is separate and is at 1B1. The NIC is expected to be at 340 and in QDIO mode. It should be coupled to a layer 2 VSwitch. 

You must create <vmid> NORDAUTO with the network info of this guest. 
Sample contents of LTROTH3 NORDAUTO (a live example) …

NORD_HOSTNAME=ltroth3.casita.net
NORD_IPV4AD=148.100.88.35
NORD_IPV4GW=148.100.88.1
NORD_IPV6AD=2620:91:0:688:1::35/64

These values get appended to other boot parameters when you run ‘NORDAUTO’. If you do not have (or do not need) IPv6 connectivity, the IPv6 line can be omitted. The above configuration is a working example for a system with static addresses, a known IPv4 gateway, and well behaved IPv6 advertisement/discovery.

NORDAUTO EXEC runs to successful IPL in less than 15 seconds. You get a shell with very few commands, but able to run the commands described below in this document. It requires as little as 64M. Complete installation normally takes less than 20 minutes, most of which is formatting the disks and copying the content. (Very little interaction needed.)

nordinstboot

From the installation shell, ‘nordinstboot’ will format your 1B0, create an EXT2 filesystem, and populate it with the operating system. It will then install IPL text thus making the disk bootable. The supplied boot parameters expect root at 1B1. (see next) 

This release ships with separate boot and root filesystems. The boot disk can be the root disk, but it was convenient to deliver NORD this way. 

nordinstroot

From the installation shell, ‘nordinstroot’ will format your 1B1, create an EXT3 filesystem, and populate it with a viable collection of per-instance /etc and /var content. When you boot from the 1B0, the system will use this 1B1 to hold all read-write content. 

After running ‘nordinstboot’ and ‘nordinstroot’ you can exit from the installation shell. The installation kernel will panic. On z/VM you will be in a CP READ state. This is normal. 

nordinstpost

After running ‘nordinstboot’ and ‘nordinstroot’, you can IPL your new system. You should then complete the installation using ‘nordinstpost’ which will download the sources for additional packages not included directly with the NORD core system in some jurisdictions. Most importantly, ‘nordinstpost’ will build OpenSSH. 

The system ships with no usable passwords. By default, INIT spawns a root shell on the console. From that privileged environment you can set a password or (better) create IDs for your use. You should add one or more users to the “wheel” group and selectively escalate privileges via ‘sudo’ (rather than sign on as root).