Chapter 35. Boot media for installing RHEL on 64-bit IBM Z servers

After establishing a connection with the mainframe, you need to perform an initial program load (IPL), or boot, from the medium containing the installation program. This document describes the most common methods of installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 64-bit IBM Z. In general, any method may be used to boot the Linux installation system, which consists of a kernel (kernel.img) and initial RAM disk (initrd.img) with parameters in the generic.prm file supplemented by user defined parameters. Additionally, a generic.ins file is loaded which determines file names and memory addresses for the initrd, kernel and generic.prm.

The Linux installation system is also called the installation program in this book.

The control point from where you can start the IPL process depends on the environment where your Linux is to run. If your Linux is to run as a z/VM guest operating system, the control point is the control program (CP) of the hosting z/VM. If your Linux is to run in LPAR mode, the control point is the mainframe’s Support Element (SE) or an attached 64-bit IBM Z Hardware Management Console (HMC).

You can use the following boot media only if Linux is to run as a guest operating system under z/VM:

You can use the following boot media only if Linux is to run in LPAR mode:

You can use the following boot media for both z/VM and LPAR:

If you use DASD or an FCP-attached SCSI disk device as boot media, you must have a configured zipl boot loader.