XCAT_2.18.2_Release_Notes

xCAT 2.18.2 release notes (August 1, 2026)

xCAT 2.18.2 is a maintenance release for the 2.18 series. It includes the changes from the interim 2.18.1 tag, which marked an Enterprise Linux snapshot but did not have a separate GitHub release. These notes cover the full change set since 2.18.0.

Upgrade notes

• With the Kea backend, makedhcp -n once again follows the ISC DHCP replacement model. It writes a fresh configuration without importing old reservations and saves the previous active configuration as .xcatbak. Run makedhcp -a or makedhcp <noderange> to populate reservations afterward.
• New installations on Enterprise Linux 9 or later and Ubuntu 20.04 or later use HMAC-SHA256 for DNS TSIG. Existing installations keep their configured algorithm.
• RPM and Debian package transactions now preserve the selected xcatd init state instead of re-enabling or replacing a locally managed service setup.

DHCP, DNS, and network boot

• Kea reservation handling now reports unresolved hostnames without abandoning valid nodes in the same request. NICs marked *NOIP* are skipped, and live reservation updates no longer leave the generated and active configurations in different states. See #7704, #7707, and #7709.
• Kea now uses the configured runtime paths for its control sockets and service account. Ubuntu backend selection uses the complete release number rather than only the major version. See #7695 and #7697.
• DDNS retries transient update failures, returns an error when the failure persists, and recognizes routed local nameserver addresses. See #7653 and #7658.
• UEFI clients reporting architecture 00:07 receive the correct boot loader. IPv6 reverse-zone generation no longer loops indefinitely, and the Kea path uses the shared MAC normalization logic. See #7659, #7683, and #7679.

Provisioning and platform fixes

• Ubuntu Subiquity profiles now carry an identity section, support an online apt mirror, generate correct match-by-MAC netplan configuration, and avoid copying the image builder's machine identity into diskless images.
• POWER and KVM fixes add the missing EL8 and EL9 ppc64le netboot templates, emit pseries virtual machines on ppc64le hypervisors, and use tmux with virsh for serial consoles.
• Genesis package upgrades work across usr-merged filesystems and older xCAT installations. Link detection no longer spins forever, and the fixed startup delay is limited to ppc64le systems.
• mknb avoids transient discovery addresses and builds the genesis image atomically, preventing concurrent invocations from publishing a partial image. See #7681.

Packaging, build, and service management

• buildrpms.pl can assemble a signed, self-contained multi-architecture core repository. It initializes mock build roots before use, serializes conflicting target builds, propagates worker failures, and does not sign partial output. See #7700.
• Package upgrades preserve xcatd's SysV or systemd state, including custom runlevels and locally managed init scripts. See #7685.
• go-xcat no longer aborts installation when a repository contains obsolete or unavailable packages. See #7613.
• The 2.18 GitHub workflow now runs every source unit test instead of a small hand-maintained subset. See #7686.

Other fixes

• nodech accepts comma-delimited values with the ,= and ^= operators.
• makehosts indexes host lookups. IPv6 route parsing ignores link-local and non-route lines, while formatNetmask handles an undefined mask instead of failing.
• rcons, replaycons, and tcons work with resolved conserver addresses, Confluent console selection, and current tmux releases.
• xcatprobe uses ss for listener checks and reports command failures instead of silently treating them as closed ports.
• copycds keeps SLE 15 source media in separate slots, and IPMI suite 3 authentication retries a zero-length RAKP2 HMAC response.

Validation

A clean Rocky Linux 9.7 x86_64 KVM deployment was tested end to end with Kea. Firmware boot, xNBA, Anaconda, postscript execution, static network configuration, and final install status all completed with the reserved node address.

Download

• xCAT 2.18.2 on GitHub
• Source comparison from 2.18.0

Package repositories and offline bundles are published separately from the GitHub source release.