Hercules and Slackware (slack/390) - Part 1

Recently I renewed my interest in the IBM mainframe computers.
From a colleague I learned about a program called Hercules that emulates a complete IBM mainframe system, from the early S/360 to the newer z/Architecture machines.

I already knew that Linux runs on these machines, so I started imagining running Slack/390 (the official S/390 port of Slackware) on Hercules on my Slackware 12.1 box.
Something like this:


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It took a bit more of an effort than expected, since there aren't any simple step-by-step instructions to install Slack/390 on Hercules available on the internet.

So, to help anyone interested, I decided to create this little HOW-TO page...

First a little guide to get Hercules working on your system:

UPDATE: You can now download pre-built Slackware packages for Hercules, see this post.

1) Go to your favorite sources directory (in my case ~/sources):
# cd ~/sources
2) Download the latest version from the Hercules site (use any downloader you prefer, I use wget):
# wget http://www.hercules-390.org/hercules-3.05.tar.gz
3) untar the package:
# tar -xzvf hercules-3.05.tar.gz
4) Go into the directory containing the sources:
# cd hercules-3.05
5) Check if we have all the right version (compiler, etc.):
# ./util/cvslvlck
6) Answer y when asked, logout & login again
7) Configure, compile & install:
# ./configure
# make
# make install
8) Test Hercules to see if it starts ok:
# hercules

If everything worked out fine, you should get a screen like this:



In my next post I'll explain how I installed Slack/390...