XCAT_2.13_Release_Notes

The xCAT 2.13.0 release lines up with the IBM High Performance Computing and Technical Compute software release on IBM Power Systems S822LC for High Performance Computing Servers. Announcement

Generally Available: 12/09/2016

Highlighted Functions and Changes in Behavior

Features

Operating System Support

• SLES 12.2 ppc64le/x86_64 (non-hierarchy)

Highlighted Functions

• The xCAT-genesis kernel for ppc64(le) contains the following updated drivers

  driver	version
  mlx4-en	3.2-1.0.1.1
  i40e	1.5.16

• rflash saves output of the firmware flashing progress in /var/log/xcat/rflash/<node>.log. Users can tail the file to see progress.

• The Document Configure RAID before deploying the OS is updated to help users configure a simple RAID1 across 2 disks on RHEL 7.x Operating Systems. Sample partition script is provided in https://github.com/xcat2/xcat-extensions

• statelite images are created by default when copycds is executed on Red Hat 7.x operating systems.

xCAT Documentation

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

Download xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.13.0-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.13.0-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.13.0-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-2.13.0-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 2148 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 the Genesis Kernel to a specific interface set for the dhcpinterfaces attribute in the site table. See noboot for more information.

  This fix is to enable the noboot option for the nics with vlan tag enabled.

• Issue 1939 linux orderly shutdown not noticed by xcat

• Issue 1972 stateless boot node looses network connection at dhcp lease expiration time

• Issue 2007 Setting "switch" attribute by chdef command is ineffective

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

• Issue 2174 several issues on generating grub.cfg-xxx when netboot="grub2"

• Issue 2167 xcat is failing to run postbootscripts on stateful node

• Issue 2183 2.13 mypostscript syntax error in subroutine run_ps on sles11.4

• Issue 2204 diskfull provison node status always booting

• Issue 2209 Clearly define the method for configuration of RAID

• Issue 2225 Stale rootimg.gz file left in the rootimg dir caused node boot failed

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 2248 setupntp failed on sles12.1 diskless node. This issue is likely caused by a upstream issue in ntp.4.2.8pX, please refer to the GitHub ticket to trace the update.

• Issue 2297 sles12.2 mysqlsetup -i could not work. It is OK to use sles12.2 as Management Node. The issue occurs when deploy a sles12.2 Service Node.