Installation assistant for Linux on IBM Z

Installation assistant for Linux on IBM Z, a modern web application that is intended to be run on GitHub Pages.

Table of Contents

• Quickstart
• Known issues
• Overview
• Prerequisites
• Governance
• Repository layout
  • Source folder layout
• Testing
  • Unit Testing
  • Functional Verification
  • Accessibility Testing

Quickstart

If you are looking for the deployed Installation assistant for Linux on IBM Z application itself please click on the run button at the top of the page next to the build button. Alternatively to clicking the button the application is available at this location. In cases where you are instead interested in the sources of the application you might consider continue reading to familiarize yourself with the code base.

Known issues

A list of known issues is maintained at this location. You may review it prior to reporting an issue.

Overview

The Installation assistant for Linux on IBM Z application is supposed to be build and deployed to a GitHub Pages instance. There it will be served as a web application. It is supposed to streamline the workflow of creating a so called parameter file that would ease and thus automate the installation process for Linux on s390 systems.

The application implements a parameter file generation feature for which there’s no competitor. Linux distributions as mentioned provide both installer technology based on traditional GUI toolkits (GTK/KDE) and those that are web based and thus run in the browser.

For the latter these type of installer lack the specific s390 feature set we thus intend to provide to significantly ease the installation journey for Linux on IBM Z and thus drive customers towards IBM Z due to the simplification approach the application provides.

The application allows to provide a self-service approach by having the application deployed and hosted on a standard HTTP server without the need to install it locally. Something of which we anticipate that it will reduce involving IBM support for instances where the customer could be using the deployed application instead to accomplish the task of installing Linux on a s390 system.

Prerequisites

The following list describes the environment that is required to run the application locally and thus be able to tailor it in support of customizing it.

• Node Version Manager (0.39.2 or latest)

• NodeJS (20.11.1 or latest)

• NPM (10.5.0 or latest)

Governance

This repository contains the following files. They are provide to govern the contribution and development process accordingly.

• CONTRIBUTING: Contribution guidelines

• LICENSE: The MIT license that applies to this package

• CHANGELOG: The history of liz versions

• AUTHORS: A list of all authors of the liz package

• CODINGSTYLE: Recommendations for writing liz code

Repository layout

The repository is structured the following way.

1. public - localized strings and config files that are used by the app.

2. src - source files. Mainly JavaScript or JSX code.

Source folder layout

1. components - contains UI components as used by the app.

2. content - contains page content such as the landing and edit page.

3. contexts - contains contexts that gets instantiated via createContext and used by the various components.

4. reducers - contains reducers that manage the state for the various components.

5. routes - contains code to establish and manage the routes for the various pages.

6. states - contains the states for the various components.

7. uiUtil, util - utility functions.

Testing

Unit Testing

Automated testing is currently unavailable. It is planned to provide test automation for unit tests based on Jest and Vitest,

Functional Verification

Functional verification testing (FVT) currently is a manual test. There are test buckets available that can be used to manually regression test the application workflow.

Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing needs to be done manually. The IBM Equal Access Toolkit provides a browser plug-in to analyze each page according to particular accessibility rules it is using. There are instructions available how to install and use this plug-in.