need a test to avoid a problem in generic.prm

[herrold]

per Neale F in LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU this date:

Just to close the circuit on this thread. The problem was a bug that requires the contents of

generic.prm 

to be one long string rather than NL delimited

so something to at least test, if not automatically fix that file

$ sed -i -e 's@\n@ @g' generic.prm

[herrold]

also, later:

Still present with 7.5

in addition to 7.6

[herrold]

later from: Timothy Sipples sipples@sg.ibm.com

It looks fairly difficult and might not even be possible given how the kernel seems to work in this area, but, in the meantime, if you want to suggest a small addition to Red Hat's documentation, that'd be nice. The relevant section of the Installation Guide is located here:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/installation_guide/sect-parameter-configuration-files-samples-s390

I suggest adding these sentences just below the generic.prm example (assuming I've got this information correct):

"Give your new parameter file a name meaningful to your installation practices and standards. All parameters in your parameter file must be specified within the first line using only spaces between parameters. This single line can be practically any length. If your text editor wraps lines on screen (as shown in the above example), please make sure your editor does not insert any line breaks (LF or CR/LF) between parameters."

I can definitely see how this part of the Installation Guide is confusing. The [incumbent] example certainly looks like line breaks are acceptable or even required.

[trothr]

Based on this and on email conversation, ZNETBOOT should warn users if the "base parm deck" exceeds 3 cards (240 bytes).

Also, we should play-up that ZNETBOOT hides the complexity of creating a CMSCONFFILE and the related CMSDASD parm.