Creating a qeth group device

6.14 LPAR mode z/VM guest

Use the chzdev or znetconf command to configure network devices. Alternatively, you can use sysfs.

Before you begin

You must know the device bus-IDs that correspond to the read, write, and data subchannel of your OSA-Express CHPID in QDIO mode or HiperSockets CHPID as defined in the IOCDS of your mainframe.

Procedure

To create a qeth group device, either:

  • Issue the chzdev or znetconf command to create and configure a group device. The command groups the correct bus-IDs for you and sets the device online.
    For example, to configure and enable a group device for the active configuration with the chzdev command, issue:
    chzdev -e -a qeth <read_device_bus_id>:<write_device_bus_id>:<data_device_bus_id>
  • Write the device numbers of the subchannel triplet to the sysfs group attribute to only define a group device.
    Issue a command of the form:
    # echo <read_device_bus_id>,<write_device_bus_id>,<data_device_bus_id> > /sys/bus/ccwgroup/drivers/qeth/group

Results

The qeth device driver uses the device bus-ID of the read subchannel to create a directory for a group device:
/sys/bus/ccwgroup/drivers/qeth/<read_device_bus_id>
This directory contains a number of attributes that determine the settings of the qeth group device. The following sections describe how to use these attributes to configure a qeth group device.

Example

In this example (see Figure 1), a single OSA-Express CHPID in QDIO mode is used to connect a Linux® instance to a network.

Mainframe configuration:
Figure 1. Mainframe configuration
This graphic is described in the surrounding text.
Linux configuration:

Assuming that 0.0.aa00 is the device bus-ID that corresponds to the read subchannel:

# echo 0.0.aa00,0.0.aa01,0.0.aa02 > /sys/bus/ccwgroup/drivers/qeth/group

This command results in the creation of the following directories in sysfs:

  • /sys/bus/ccwgroup/drivers/qeth/0.0.aa00
  • /sys/bus/ccwgroup/devices/0.0.aa00
  • /sys/devices/qeth/0.0.aa00

Both the command and the resulting directories would be the same for a HiperSockets CHPID.

To use the chzdev command to enable and configure the same device, issue:
chzdev -e -a qeth a000:a001:a002