Installing MVS 3.8

Background

When I discovered the Hercules community in February, 2000, the only operating system that had been successfully implemented under Hercules was OS/360 MVT version 21.8f. Efforts were already underway to make an early version of MVS available. Throughout the remainder of that year, a lot of effort was directed toward achieving this goal. The people contributing to this effort were located literally around the globe.

A copy of a set of distribution libraries from a functional MVS 3.8 system was uploaded to an FTP site by Bertus Bekker. This archived 3350 volume, often referred to in Hercules' discussions as the Bekker distribution, provided many individuals the opportunity to work on getting a functional MVS system running under Hercules. The drawbacks of the Bekker distribution included:

the lack of a starter system under which to do the installation/system generation,
some required components were missing from the libraries,
there were unknown modifications to some of the components in the libraries, and
there appeared to be some licensed material included on the volume which could potentially lead to legal conflicts with IBM.

Since MVS 3.8 appeared to be in the status of Public Domain software and was available for order directly from IBM as a "no charge" product, several members of the Hercules' community obtained the software directly from IBM. The distribution tapes were converted to AWS format and made available for download from several locations.

This is the fifth revision of the MVS 3.8j installation instructions that I have written. The first version was based upon utilizing the combination of the Bekker distribution libraries and the starter system from the IBM distribution tapes. Because of the possible contamination of the Bekker distribution with licensed material, the Bekker distribution was removed from the FTP site where it had been available. Since the Bekker distribution was no longer available, I replaced that set of instructions with one based solely upon the IBM distribution tapes. However, those instructions also relied upon a couple of key components that had been extracted from the Bekker distribution libraries. The current version relies exclusively upon the IBM distribution libraries. Further, this revision updates the references, screen snapshots, and output logs to reflect version 3.05 of Hercules (23 June 2007).

From the beginning this has been a community effort, and I have relied upon and incorporated suggestions and corrections to my instructions from many other individuals in the Hercules' community. The initial set of instructions would never have come into existence without the contributions (both directly to me and through the Hercules group discussions) by Jay Maynard, Volker Bandke, Ken Hall, Jim Morrison, Dutch Owens, Phil Roberts, and Wolfgang Schaefer. The shared successes (and failures) in those joint endeavors were more than a little reflected in the second and subsequent revisions of these instructions. Between the major revisions, I frequently make updates to incorporate new information, either garnered from the Hercules' community discussion groups or from direct feedback received from those who have either seen errors or problems in my instructions or knew of different or better ways to accomplish the installation tasks. I have tried to always give credit to the source of the information sent to me by others that has been incorporated into this tutorial and I shall continue to do so.

A note of advice - as someone who started out in the early 1970s doing DOS Release 26 System Generations and has always enjoyed poking my nose "behind the scenes", I regard this this type of exercise as fun and relaxing. If you don't have some experience with IBM mainframes or do not enjoy deciphering cryptic messages and solving perplexing problems, I would advise you to acquire Volker Bandke's Turnkey MVS system. The current version may be downloaded from his site - http://www.bsp-gmbh.com/turnkey/index.html or ordered on a CD-ROM from http://www.cbttape.org/cdrom.htm. By answering a few questions, in a matter of several minutes you will have a ready to run MVS 3.8j installed under your Windows or Linux system, plus a huge set of utilities and bonus MVS programs that Volker has gathered and installed.

However, if you want to gain insight into and experience with MVS, installing and configuring your own copy of MVS is a great learning experience. After you have successfully followed these instructions, not only will you have a functional MVS system, you will have a fair working knowledge of the MVS console, Job Control Language, and problem resolution under MVS.

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Due to a recent flood of messages posted to the Turnkey-MVS forum that do not relate to the Turnkey-MVS originated by Volker Bandke, I feel it necessary to add this notice.
The system that results from following the directions on this page, and the pages following, is NOT the Turnkey-MVS. It does share some similarities and, of course, has a common origin in that both are built from IBM's distribution tapes for MVS 3.8j. You should not expect the kind folks on that forum to be able to help you resolve problems with a system that you generated using these instructions.

I must repeat that building MVS from the distribution libraries is not a trivial exercise. Although I have documented a process that is repeatable and can be completed relatively quickly by anyone experienced with IBM's MVT or MVS Operating Systems nomenclature and Job Control Language, it may be preferable to download a copy of the Turnkey-MVS CD and install the ready-built MVS system from there. The links for doing so are given in two paragraphs above this notice.

If you have difficulties following these instructions, please first attempt to resolve the problem by carefully reviewing the information on this website. You can often find further information by using Google or other Internet search engines using key phrases related to the problem you are having. Problems related to MVS and their solutions are often discussed on the H390-MVS forum and the IBM-Main discussion list, and will frequently be found by a search. If you continue to use MVS, you will probably need ready access to manuals published by IBM for MVS and the software components related to it. You can find many of these online at www.softlib.org or www.bitsavers.org, as well as IBM's online library. At a minimum you should have copies of the OS/VS Message Library [GC26-3920], OS/VS MVS JCL (Job Control Language) [GC28-0692], and OS/VS2 MVS Utilities [GC26-3902]. If you find yourself at a complete block and cannot proceed, you may contact me for help in resolving your problem using the email address that may be found at the bottom of each page of this website. I cannot promise instant answers, nor that I can resolve every problem, but I will attempt to provide help to all who ask. If you do not receive a response from me, posting a request for assistance on the H390-MVS forum is a likely next step.

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Host Platform

These instructions can be followed to install MVS 3.8 under Hercules on either Windows or Linux platforms. I am aware that Hercules has now been ported to BSD, Mac, and Alpha platforms, and there should be no reason that these instructions could not be used as a guide to install MVS 3.8 under Hercules on those systems, as well.

Although I started out under Linux, other personal requirements have caused me to migrate almost exclusively to Windows 2000 Professional. Given the choice, I would probably be running under Linux. As of this revision, I am providing two versions of the archive containing the Hercules' configuration files, scripts, and jobstreams -- one for Windows, created using WinZip and with text file lines terminated with x'0d'x'0a', and one for Linux, created using tar+zip under Debian Linux with text file lines terminated with x'0a'. In any step where there is a difference to be aware of, I will attempt to address the differences in the instructions. The screen captures used throughout the instructions were made under Windows.

Installation Steps

The steps involved in installing MVS can be segregated into four main phases -

These are serial steps, since the output of each is required before the next may begin. With a fast processor, you can complete these steps in a few hours. If you are going through this process for the first time, you should expect it to take longer. I would suggest that you print out these instructions and gather the required files on your computer before beginning.

So, when you are ready, proceed to the next step - Gathering Materials and Creating DASD Volumes.

I hope that you have found my instructions useful. If you have questions that I can answer to help expand upon my explanations and examples shown here, please don't hesitate to send them to me:

This page was last updated on October 02, 2008 .