XCAT_2.19.2_Release_Notes

xCAT 2.19.2 Release Notes

xCAT 2.19.2 is the second maintenance release of the 2.19 series. It carries two defect fixes and one opt-in feature for EL stateless images. It does not change the operating system support matrix introduced with xCAT 2.19.

Only the core packages are new. No dependency package changed, so 2.19.2 installs against the xcat-dep repositories published with 2.19.0.

Highlighted Changes

Package signature checks for EL stateless images

genimage built every EL stateless image with gpgcheck=0 on every repository. The new linuximage.gpgcheck attribute turns signature checks on for the base and otherpkgs repositories. When it is set to 1 or yes, genimage exports the keys that the management node trusts and writes gpgcheck=1 with a gpgkey= entry for each repository. When it is not set, the image repositories are the same as in 2.19.1.

The management node must trust the signing key of every repository. Import the key of a third-party repository, such as EPEL or OpenHPC, with rpm --import on the management node before you build. genimage rejects an invalid value, and rejects the attribute for an image builder that does not support it. See "Verify Package Signatures" in the genimage documentation and #7954, a backport of #7904.

The same change stops genimage from writing a baseurl=file:/// repository for an otherpkgdir that holds only URLs. That repository logged "Failed to download metadata" on every build.

The configib postscript

On EL 9 and later, configib changed the existing NetworkManager connection of the InfiniBand interface but did not turn on connection.autoconnect. On a diskful EL 10 node that connection is the one the installer created with autoconnect off, so the IPoIB address was lost after the first reboot. See #7951, a backport of #7939.

genimage and /run

genimage bind-mounted the host /run into the image root before the directory existed there. The first build of a new RPM image printed mount: .../rootimg/run: mount point does not exist. and installed its packages without the host /run. See #7955, a backport of #7953.

Documentation title and release table

The published 2.19 documentation was titled "xCAT 2.17.0 documentation", because the documentation release string was not updated. The release information page now lists 2.18.2 and the 2.19 releases. See #7884.

Installation

EL (RHEL, AlmaLinux, Rocky 8, 9 and 10)

# /etc/yum.repos.d/xcat-core.repo
[xcat-core]
name=xCAT 2 Core packages
baseurl=https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/2.19/xcat-core
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/2.19/xcat-core/repodata/repomd.xml.key

The dependency repositories are unchanged from 2.19.0. Take the two published files, where <N> is the EL major version:

curl -fsSo /etc/yum.repos.d/xcat-dep.repo \
  https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/2.19/xcat-dep/rh<N>/$(uname -m)/xcat-dep.repo
curl -fsSo /etc/yum.repos.d/xcat-dep-common.repo \
  https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/2.19/xcat-dep/common/xcat-dep-common.repo

Then:

dnf clean all
dnf makecache
dnf install xCAT

dnf makecache matters: a client that still holds the 2.19.1 metadata does not see 2.19.2.

Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04 and 26.04)

The core suites are focal, jammy, noble and resolute, each with one component, main.

curl -fsSL https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/apt/2.19/xcat-core/apt.key \
  | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/xcat-core.gpg
curl -fsSL https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/apt/2.19/xcat-dep/apt.key \
  | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/xcat-dep.gpg
codename=$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")
cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xcat.list <<EOF
deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/xcat-core.gpg] https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/apt/2.19/xcat-core $codename main
deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/xcat-dep.gpg] https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/apt/2.19/xcat-dep $codename main
EOF
apt-get update
apt-get install -y xcat

Offline tarball bundles

• EL core: https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-core/2.19.x_Linux/xcat-core-2.19.2-linux.tar.bz2
• Ubuntu core: https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-core/2.19.x_Ubuntu/xcat-core-2.19.2-ubuntu.tar.bz2

A core bundle holds the xCAT packages only, so an offline install needs the dependency bundle as well. Its contents are the ones published with 2.19.0:

• EL dep: https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-dep/2.x_Linux/xcat-dep-2.19.1-linux.tar.bz2
• Ubuntu dep: https://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-dep/2.x_Ubuntu/xcat-dep-2.19.1-ubuntu.tar.bz2

Each bundle unpacks to a directory with mklocalrepo.sh, which points the package manager at the unpacked tree.

Source

The signed tag and the GitHub source archives are on the xCAT 2.19.2 release page.

The complete change set is the 2.19.1...2.19.2 comparison.

Documentation

Complete documentation is hosted at https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/.