What were you trying to do that didn't work?

Installing RHEL 9.0.z on our IBM z16 LPARs is only possible with very cumbersome and manual work-arounds since RHEL 9.0.z does not support the long kernel command lines yet, but the z16 uses FCP SCSI disks that require long kernel command lines for the SCSI multipath setup. It wasn't a big issue in the past when we were still using the z13 with DASDs and there weren't many requests for 9.0.z, but in recent times (now also with sustainable engineering ramping up), it got a real hurdle. So we would like to ask for support for the long kernel command lines in zipl in 9.0.z. (Some kernel patches will be required, too, but we'll have a separate ticket for those)

The following patches are required in s390utils for getting this fixed:

cff4b03 zipl: move secure boot verification into its own function
970c697 zipl: move command line processing into its own function
c5ae1a4 zipl/boot: add strlcpy implementation
a5c04e5 zipl/boot: rewrite setup_commandline()
8b3d3dd zipl: rename COMMAND_LINE_SIZE to LEGACY_COMMAND_LINE_SIZE
bb8f17a zipl: fix tape boot
1627c6a zipl: Support command lines longer than 896 bytes
e384f06 zipl: add common ipl data
5894e3f zipl: add free_common_ipl_data()
5fb6434 zipl: add get_common_components() and finalize_...
832268e zipl: add error_text_section()
3ee625d zipl: add check_common_ipl_data()
69c5ee2 zipl: no need to check for NULL when calling free()
11b401b zipl: move and make check for maximum command line length dyn 

What is the impact of this issue to you?

Without these fixes, it's incredibly cumbersome to install RHEL 9.0.z (which we have to support for at least one more year) on FCP SCSI disks on IBM Z LPARs.

Please provide the package NVR for which the bug is seen:

 s390utils-2.19.0-2

How reproducible is this bug?:

100%

Steps to reproduce

Best way to reproduce is of course to install 9.0.z on an LPAR with multipath FCP SCSI disks. But the problem can also be reproduced easily on a s390x VM that you can get from beaker:

1. Provision a s390x VM in beaker with the latest version of RHEL 9.0.z
2. Edit the config of the current kernel in /boot/loaders/entries/ with a command line that is longer than 900 characters.
3. Run "zipl"

Expected results

zipl should install the kernel with a long command line

Actual results

zipl complains that the kernel command line is too long