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  <sect2 arch="s390"><title>S/390 Limitations</title>
<para>

In order to run the installation system a working network setup and
ssh session is needed on S/390.

</para><para>

The booting process starts with a network setup that prompts you for
several network parameters. If the setup is successful, you will login
to the system by starting an ssh session which will launch the
standard installation system.

</para>
  </sect2>


  <sect2 arch="s390"><title>S/390 Boot Parameters</title>
<para>

On S/390 you can append boot parameters in the parm file.  This file can
either be in ASCII or EBCDIC format. It needs to be fixed-width with
80 characters per line. A sample parm file
<filename>parmfile.debian</filename> is provided with the installation
images. If a parameter is too long to fit into the 80 characters limit
it can simply be continued in the first column of the next line. All
the lines are concatenated without spaces when being passed to the
kernel.

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for more information about S/390-specific boot parameters.
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</para><para>

If you boot the installer in a logical partition (LPAR) or
virtual machine (VM) where a lot of devices are visible, you can
instruct the kernel to restrict the list to a fixed set of devices.
This is advised for the installer's boot process if a lot of disks are
visible, most likely in LPAR mode. The <quote>cio_ignore</quote> option supports both
a blacklist (to only disallow a few devices) and a whitelist (to only
allow specific devices):

<informalexample role="example"><screen>
 # blacklist: just ignore the two devices 300 and 301
 cio_ignore=0.0.0300-0.0.0301
 # whitelist: ignore everything but 1150, FD00, FD01 and FD02
 cio_ignore=all,!0.0.1150,!0.0.fd00-0.0.fd02
</screen></informalexample>

Please note that all devices numbers' hex digits need to be specified in
lower case. Furthermore if this boot parameter is used all devices
need to be listed: this includes at least disks, network devices and
the console. To be considered during the installer's boot process the
above option needs to be added to <filename>parmfile.debian</filename>.

</para>
  </sect2>
