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OpenSolaris Project: Systemz

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Welcome

The systemz project, also known as "Sirius," is a port of OpenSolaris to the IBM System z mainframe operating in z/VM mode.

Implementation Notes

• The OpenSolaris kernel runs on z/Architecture machines in 64-bit mode only and conforms to the _LP64 data model. There is support for 32-bit applications.
• There are separate address spaces for kernel and user. The kernel operates in "primary space mode", user in home and secondary. In the future, we may look at separating the stack and code into different address spaces to prevent stack overwrite attacks/errors.
• OpenSolaris on z/Architecture conforms to the same ABI as described for Linux on System z.
• OpenSolaris on z/Architecture assumes the presence of the z/VM hypervisor. It will use many of the features of the hypervisor to perform tasks such as:
  • I/O to disk devices using the DIAG x'250' facility. This will remove the need for the device driver to support extensive recovery, retry, and logging capabilities, as these will be performed by z/VM.
  • Retrieving configuration information such as I/O devices present and memory size and configuration.
  • Co-operative memory management to allow the hypervisor to communicate with the kernel so as to better manage system memory.
  • Page fault handshaking that will enable the OpenSolaris kernel to dispatch another process when a memory fault is encountered and the page in question has been paged out by z/VM.

Getting Involved

If you would like to be involved with this project, please feel free to introduce yourself in the Emerging Platforms Community Discussion and tell us a little bit about who you are, what your background is and how you'd like to help.

If you prefer, you can also read the Emerging Platforms Community Discussion as a mailing list; you can subscribe here.

Reading

To further familiarize yourself with the systemz project, you may wish to read the project release notes (PDF format).

Source Tree and other Downloads

More information about the source tree for this project and other required downloads can be found at the System z Project Download Center.

You can also browse the project source tree via the OpenSolaris source browser.

Announcements

13 Oct 2008	Mercurial source repository available
10 Oct 2008	System z project source code now available!