XCAT_2.14_Release_Notes

Highlighted Functions and Changes in Behavior

Features

Highlighted Functions

• OpenBMC Python Framework - Feedback is appreciated

  An new Python-based framework is introduced with this release of xCAT which improves the response time significantly for xCAT commands issued against OpenBMC REST API. This framework has dependencies on Python libraries that may not be available from the OS distribution.

  See this reference documentation for supported more information.

• For hardware discovery

  For user who build xCAT-genesis-base-ppc64 with xCAT-genesis-builder get from https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-dep/2.x_Linux/beta/:

  • To use latest xCAT-genesis-base-ppc64 package shipped by xCAT, use the command below to uninstall original package before update xCAT:

    rpm -e xCAT-genesis-base-ppc64-xxx.noarch --nodeps
    

  • To build a newer version of xCAT-genesis-base-ppc64, download xCAT-genesis-builder-2.14-snap201805110001.noarch.rpm from https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-dep/2.x_Linux/beta/, then rebuild and install it.

  The main updating is including 'libnss_dns' into xCAT-genesis-base for hostname resolution.

• xcat2/xcat-inventory - An inventory tool to manipulate xCAT configuration data, See this reference documentation for more information.

  This tool enables cluster administrators to:

  • manage xCAT cluster configuration under source control
  • define and create an xCAT cluster more easily

xCAT Documentation

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

Download xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.14.0-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.14.0-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.14.0-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-2.14.0-ubuntu.tar.bz2

Test Environment

Hardware Platform and Operating Systems which have been verified:

Hardware Platform	Operation System
IBM Power System AC922	RHEL 7.5 for Power Little Endian (POWER9)
IBM Power S822LC for HPC	RHEL 7.5
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 SP2 Issue #2322
IBM Power 750	RHEL 7.4
IBM Power 750	RHEL 6.9
IBM Power 750	SLES 11 SP4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	RHEL 7.4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	RHEL 6.9
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 SP2 Issue #2322

Key Issues Resolved

Issue #4629 For sites that would like to forward to their own DNS servers, the site table includes the 'forwarders' attribute to allow for this. If the site internal DNS resolves RFC1918 addresses, xCAT dns doesn't work.

Issue #5035 NODE info missing from /opt/xcat/xcatinfo after diskless and statelite boot

Issue #5073 Provide an example in postinstall to show how to patch initrd for diskless

Issue #4996 "xcatd: SSL listener" process keeps 100% cpu and all xCAT requests hang

Issue #4961 Switching to goconvers doesn't modify conserver startup configuration. goconserver doesn't start on reboot

Issue #4959 chroot, rpm -qa error: Failed to initialize NSS library

Issue #4951 goconserver doesn't work in hierarchical mode

Issue #4947 In large systems, "xcatmax*" default configuration values are not sufficient

Issue #4933 There is httpd exception in diskless service node which is running rhels7.5-snap2

Issue #4929 xcatd failed to start in rhels7.5-snap2 diskless service node

Issue #4865 kdump testing on diskless RHEL 7.4 ppc64le (Pegas 1.0) intermittently takes up to 5-6 mins to update nfs path in /etc/kdump.conf

Issue #4009 Commad makeconservercf should check attribute cons in node definition

Restrictions and Known Issues

Issue #5121 rspconfig failed to set bmc ip etc in some specific condition

Issue #3513 For the latest xCAT-genesis-base, the mlx4_en driver 2.2-1 (Feb 2014) is included, it can not support Mellanox Ethernet NIC that need driver newer than 2.2-1, for more information, please reference build genesis locally with latest RH MN

Issue #5057 This issue cannot be reproduced, and the work around is : check the bmc state use rflash <node> -l, if the target firmware state is Active(+), execute rpower <node> boot to reboot the host and let new firmware take effect.

Issue #3284 While selinux on KVM host was reconfigured from enforcing to disabled, rpower failed to power previous created KVM guest on