Open Mainframe Project Summer Mentorship Series: Midterm Updates – At this midpoint, our selected mentees are reporting in. Below, you’ll learn what they’ve built, the challenges they’ve overcome, and their goals for the rest of the summer. We’re proud of every contribution and eager to see what comes next. Hear from Paras Chawla, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar below.
Introduction
Heyo folks, I’m Paras Chawla, a BCA graduate with a passion for computers, Linux, and all things open source. Ever since I watched the Mr. Robot series, I’ve shifted from Windows to Linux. I like to play with computer parts, opening laptops, and poking around with the operating systems on machines.
I still remember how I got my first PC with a single core processor by taking parts from a scrap shop near my house. It was heaven for me.
I started learning programming from 12th grade, as I wanted to be an ethical hacker in the beginning but got into development and software after joining graduation.
As I used to love to work in terminals and Linux, I got selected into LFX ’25 in the Open Mainframe Project and it was the best thing that happened to me this year.
What is LFX, and Why Is It So Special?
To put it simply, it’s one of the most prestigious programs open-source contributors can dream of. Linux Foundation Mentorship Experience (LFX) is more than just a mentorship—it’s a gateway to your first professional experience in the industry, where you work alongside legendary people. It challenges you to step outside your comfort zone and explore unfamiliar territory that boost your existing knowledge and show you how to apply it in production systems.
In college, you mostly work on personal projects. But here, you’re building real software that could be used by millions. That kind of development teaches you far more critical lessons.
How I Got In: The Application Journey
It was April 2025 and I was looking for some projects on the LFX homepage. Although there is a myth that to join programs like LFX, GSOC you need to be the best programmer in the world, the open source community is welcoming—you just need the curiosity and hunger to learn unfamiliar things.
Many projects required heavy DevOps-specific skills, which I didn’t have. Then I came across the Open Mainframe Project. It has three projects which align with my skills. I explored everything I could about the project—its repositories, documentation, and background—then applied.Each organization has its own tasks and selection process. But for me the decisions were based on my resume and cover letter.
Then I tried to reach out to mentors because all these things were new to me. After a long email I sent, my mentor replied with just one question.. “Do you have any experience with z/VM?”, and I didn’t have any, since it involved mainframe systems. But I had the experience with Linux. So he sent some virtualized environments based on z/VM which I explored in the meantime.
Later, I was selected for the final interview—and eventually, I received the news that I had been accepted as a mentee.From my experience, you don’t need to be a highly skilled programmer—you just need a genuine hunger to learn and to be honest and unique in this stuff. Nowadays, everyone sends cold emails and cover letters generated by LLMs but you need some personalised touch to make you stand out from hundreds of AI generated applications.
What Am I Working On? Meet ZLMA (zelma)
Now let’s take a quick look at what I’m working on.
Most everyday users rely on Intel or AMD CPUs to run Windows, Linux, or macOS. But at the enterprise level, there are mainframe computers that run on the s390x architecture and use z/VM and other Linux distributions, managed through a hypervisor and typically accessed via ‘green screen’ terminal interfaces—essentially command-line environments.
We’re building ZLMA (z/VM and Linux Modern Administration, pronounced ‘zelma’)—a new piece of free software that enables Linux servers running under z/VM to be managed in a more modern fashion—largely through a browser. It’s a web-based interface that interacts with Feilong REST APIs to perform operations.
Fig 1 – ZLMA webpage
ZLMA will allow users to run z/VM commands directly from a browser to the server, retrieve server console data, and manage virtual machines on the hypervisor—all with just a few clicks and no need to worry about backend command syntax.
What We’ve Built So Far
It’s been over a month working on ZLMA with my excellent mentor, and we’re nearing the halfway mark of the program.
So, let’s talk about our current progress and where we stand.
First, we successfully built the package for both s390x and Intel architectures.
Second, we ported those scripts written in bash to Python.
Third, we completely rewrote the command grammar based on the operations ZLMA will support while interacting with the Feilong API.
Fourth and most critical, we were able to establish an end-to-end connection from the frontend to the 3rd level z/VM running the API, just two days before the mid-term deadline.
Our target before mid-July is to implement support for three key operations:
- Creating a virtual machine and cloning Linux
- Adding CPUs
- Changing the memory
What I’ve Learned (So Far)
As I mentioned earlier, I’m truly living the dream I had been chasing since last year. I didn’t get the opportunity back then, but this year, I finally got the chance to live it — and it’s been incredible.
This journey has taught me a lot:
- Your success is not just about effort, but also about timing and other external factors. Everything you do today has a butterfly effect on your future.
- This is my first professional experience working with people who have 10x, even 20x more experience than I do — individuals who have spent their entire lives in tech.
- When you stick to your “known knowns,” you’re in a comfort zone. But real learning happens when you explore outside that domain.
Fig 2 – Four Domains of Knowledge
That was more on the soft skills side. On the technical front, I’ve learned so much: from mainframes and z/VM, to second-level virtual machines, and beyond. Every day is an experiment.
One day, my mentor and I accidentally broke Linux due to some configuration change. He simply said,
“You’re only going to learn by breaking things—so this is a good thing.”
That mindset has really stuck with me.
There are countless lessons I can’t even begin to describe—but these were a few raw, honest experiences from my time in the program so far.
What’s next?
Once we complete our three key goals, we’ll focus on finalizing the grammar engine so it can be effectively used in mainframe environments. We also plan to make ZLMA compatible across different architectures—ensuring it works universally for both Intel and AMD platforms as well.
See ya in the final blog.
Peace 🙂
