XCAT_2.12.4_Release_Notes

New Functions and Changes in Behavior

Features

New Operating System Support

• RHEL 7.3 ppc64le

  • Install xCAT on RHEL 7.3 ppc64le
  • Install RHEL 7.3 ppc64le in diskful/diskless Compute nodes

• RHEV 4.0 OpenPower Servers - Initial support for installing RHEV has been documented here.
  As of this time, there is no .ISO file provided for RHEV-H on PowerLE. Note: qemu-2.6 is required for RHEL 7.3

New Functions

• noboot option added to dhcpinterfaces keyword in the site table

  For the IBM S822LC for HPC "Minsky" nodes, the recommended configuration for the integrated Ethernet adapter is to NOT run a shared wire for the BMC and compute-eth0. Rather, use the compute-eth0 dedicated for the BMC and compute-eth1 dedicated for the Operating System. In this configuration xCAT provides an ability to disable sending of the Genesis Kernel to a specific interface in the dhcpinterfaces keyword in the site table See noboot for more information

• xcatprobe new subcommands

  xcatmn - Checking whether it is installed correctly and ready for use after installed xCAT.

  osdeploy - Probe operating system provision process.

  discovery - Probe for discovery process, can do pre-check for required configuration and realtime monitor of discovery process

Deprecated Function

• The "dev" and "celogin1" options of rspconfig have been removed from the code. For more information, see Security Bulletin

xCAT Documentation

xCAT documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs: http://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/

Download xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.12.4-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.12.4-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.12.4-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-2.12.4-ubuntu.tar.bz2

Test Environment

Hardware Platform and Operating Systems which have been verified:

Hardware Platform	Operation System
IBM Power S822LC for HPC	RHEL 7.3
IBM Power S822LC for HPC	Ubuntu 14.04.4
IBM Power S822LC for HPC	Ubuntu 16.04.1
IBM Power S822LC for HPC	SLES 12 SP1
IBM Power 750	RHEL 7.3
IBM Power 750	RHEL 6.8
IBM Power 750	SLES 11 SP4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	RHEL 7.3
iDataPlex M4 DX360	RHEL 6.8
iDataPlex M4 DX360	SLES 11 SP4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	Ubuntu 14.04.4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	Ubuntu 16.04.1
iDataPlex M4 DX360	SLES 12 SP1

Key Issues Resolved

• Issue 1936 genimage ctl-c leaves mount points active

• Issue 2037 changing xcat from to postgres threw away node switch information

• Issue 1957 With the frequent changes to ipmitool, added a RPM requirement to xCAT.spec to ensure that the ipmitool-xcat is at the intended version when updating xCAT.

• Issue 1963 conserver looses console output with ppc64le garison (mtm=8335-GTB)

• Issue 1801 creating a lot of new nodes during pre-disovery causes conserver a long time to acquire locks

• Issue 1939 linux orderly shutdown not noticed by xcat

• Issue 1972 stateless boot node looses network connection at dhcp lease expiration time - In switching to systemd in dracut in 2.12.3, an issue is introduced where the IP address loses IP when the dhcp lease expires.

• Issue 1881 Minsky boots genesis kernel when mutliple interfaces have dhcp dynamic ranges

• Issue 1803 node discovery won't keep nodeset parameters if genesis is still running

• Issue 1747 As a result of this issue, the behavior of rmvm is changed to more accurately reflect what happens. The rmvm command will fail if xCAT can not find VM definition in kvm_nodedata table.

• Issue 2143 When powering on KVM Virtual Machines on OpenPower LE machines, there is an issue with "AC97" sound driver error. See issue mentioned for work around/fix.

Restrictions and Known Issues

• Issue 2856 nodes provisioned with redhat osimages created by xCAT 2.12.3 or earlier missed yum repo to MN in xCAT 2.12.4 or later.

  The work around is to rerun copycds against the redhat isos. Had been included in 2.13.3 release.

• Issue 1937 nodeset nodename boot forgets what the node is provisioned with

• Issue 2128 Briggs & Stratton - xCAT Genesis is unable to recognize any networks other than loopback

• Issue 2130 [CUSTOMER] the old diskless image built by xCAT can not be used after xcat 2.12.2