XCAT_2.12_Release_Notes

New Functions and Changes in Behavior

New Operating System Support

• Ubuntu 16.04 (ppc64le, x86_64)

  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
  • Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters (MLNX_OFED_LINUX-3.2-2 Beta)

• Ubuntu 14.04.04 (ppc64le, x86_64)

  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment

• RHELS 6.8 (ppc64, x86_64)

  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment

New Features

• Docker Support

  • Life-cycle management
    Use xCAT to install the docker host and manage your docker containers [doc]

  • xCAT inside a container
    xCAT is available on the docker hub https://hub.docker.com/u/xcat/ [doc]

  • Configure Local Docker Registry
    Set up and use a local hosted docker registry [doc]

• New command: getadapter [getadapter]

  Scan the network adapters on the compute nodes to determine the predictable naming of the network interfaces when the OS is installed.

• Support [get_install_disk]

  During OS deployment, xCAT will scan all the available disks and choose the one which has OS installed as the first priority. If there are multiple candidates, use the World Wide Name (WWN) or Device type to sort.

  This feature works for RHELS, SLES, Ubuntu, and PowerKVM3.1

• New site table attribute: xcatdebugmode [doc]

  Enabling xcatdebugmode will allow Administrators to get more verbose log during Operating System installation.

• Added snmp to the scan methods to the switchdiscover command [switchdiscover]

  The -s snmp option to switchdiscover command will leverage the snmpwalk command to collect switch information.

• BMC IP will be discovered if user did not set it in the pre-defined node

• For the new installed xCAT, the auditlog will be disabled by default to improve the performance. If you want to enable it, change the site.auditskipcmds attribute.

• Added a new site attribute hierarchicalattrs to aggregate the values from all groups for the specific node attributes.

xCAT Documentation

xCAT documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs: http://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/en/2.12.0/index.html

Some highlights to documentation improvements:

• Refined the Mellanox OFED management documentation [link]
• Refined the MTMS-based Hardware Discovery documentation [link]

Download xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.12-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.12-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.12-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-2.12-ubuntu.tar.bz2

  • xCAT currently provides ipmitool-xcat-1.8.15 for the following Operating systems:

    • RHEL 7 (ppc64le, ppc64, x86_64)
    • RHEL 6 (ppc64, x86_64)
    • SLES 12 (ppc64le, x86_64)
    • SLES 11 (ppc64, x86_64)

    1.8.15 or higher must be installed on an xCAT MN that manages OpenPower machines.

Test Environment

Hardware Platform and Operating Systems which have been verified:

Hardware Platform	Operation System
IBM Power S822LC	RHELS7.2
IBM Power S822LC	Ubuntu14.04.3
IBM Power S822LC	Ubuntu14.04.4
IBM Power S822LC	Ubuntu16.04
IBM Power S822LC	SLES12
IBM Power S822LC	SLES12 SP1
IBM Power 750	RHELS7.2
IBM Power 750	SLES11 SP4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	RHELS7.2
iDataPlex M4 DX360	SLES11 SP4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	Ubuntu14.04.3
iDataPlex M4 DX360	Ubuntu14.04.4
iDataPlex M4 DX360	Ubuntu16.04
iDataPlex M4 DX360	SLES12 SP1

Key Bug Fixes

• Issue 471 Fix the rflash failure against the OpenPOWER server.

• Issue 505 How to install OFED for Infiniband device.

• Issue 1102 Make new xCAT dependency package ipmitool-xcat-1.8.15 for Rhels6/7, SLES11/12 and Ubuntu.

• Issue 1103 Issue 1080 Issue 969 Fix the issue to select the correct disk for OS deployment

• Issue 989 Take back the dhcp logs to /var/log/messages for xCAT management node

• Issue 942 Fix the issue that rh7.x compute node might lose IP before the reboot.

Restrictions and Known Problems

• Issue 827 The WWN for the disk will be changed after OS deployment. It only impacts the install disk selection when the target compute node has two or more OS installed.

• Issue 731 The OS installation and boot message cannot be seen from the rcons for x86_64 kvm virtual machine. You can refer to the workaround in the issue comment.

• Issue 869 The Ubuntu 14.04.3 diskful provision on x86_64 servers might hang in the following scenarios:

  1. The node attribute "nfsserver" is set to the hostname of MN
  2. The "nfsserver" is not set and the node attribute "xcatmaster" is set to the hostname of MN.

  Refer to the issue for details and work around.

• Issue 1090 On OpenPower systems, rcons will hang if you open a connection within 1 minute of closing it. See issue for details.

• Issue 1139 genimage ubuntu16.04-ppc64el-netboot-compute may fail with cannnot create bootstraps for rootimage. Make sure you specified full http mirror path. This is caused by a behavior change of debootstrap. Remove the previously generated osimage using: rmimage ubuntu16.04-ppc64el-netboot-compute before running genimage. See the issue for details.

• Issue 1171 On Ubuntu 16.04 xCAT management node, following commands pping,ppping,pasu,psh,pscp,prsync do NOT work. Use the workaround which are mentioned in the issue.