XCAT_2.11_Release_Notes

New Functions and Changes in Behavior

New Operating System Support

• RHEL 7.2 LE

  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
  • Install CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs
  • Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters

• Ubuntu 14.04.03

  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment
  • Install CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs
  • Install Drivers and Configure Mellanox Infiniband adapters

• Ubuntu 15.10

  • Diskful OS deployment
  • OpenPOWER, x86_64

• PowerKVM 3.1

  • Diskful PowerKVM 3.1 deployment
  • KVM virtual machine management

New Hardware Support

• IBM Power Systems S822LC support (GCA/GTA)

  • Hardware Discovery / Hardware Control
  • Firmware Update
  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for RHEL 7.2 LE
  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for Ubuntu 14.04.3
  • PowerKVM 3.1 Diskful
  • NVIDIA GPU
  • Mellanox Infiniband adapter
  • HPC kit support

• IBM Power Systems S812LC support

  • Hardware discovery / Hardware control
  • Firmware update
  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for RHEL 7.2 LE
  • Diskful / Diskless OS deployment for Ubuntu 14.04.3
  • PowerKVM 3.1 Diskful

• OpenPOWER Servers

  • NeuCloud OpenPOWER
  • ZoomNet RedPower
  • Basic Hardware Control (rpower, rcons)
  • Diskful OS Deployment (Ubuntu/PowerKVM)

New Features

• NVIDIA GPU Support for OpenPOWER [doc]

  • Support installing CUDA Toolkit for diskful and diskless systems

• Infiniband Support for OpenPOWER [doc]

  • Implemented a new OFED install script: mlnxofed_ib_install.v2
  • Support installing Mellanox OFED drivers for diskful and diskless

• xCAT KIT Support for OpenPOWER [doc]

  • Support the KIT framework for OpenPOWER Server
  • HPC software stack supported using KIT for OpenPOWER Server

• renergy command support for OpenPOWER server

  • Query Power Usage
  • Query temparature

• rflash command support for OpenPOWER server

  • Get Firmware information
  • Execute Firmware update

• Add xCAT Troubleshooting Log

  • Log output of each xCAT command execution in /var/log/xcat/commands.log
  • Add more debug messages for xcatd
  • Add more verbose and debug messages for commands nodeset and makedhcp

• xCAT Log Classification

  • Separate the log xcat from system log to a separated log file /var/log/xcat/cluster.log
  • Support log rotation

• RAID Configuration for Power Server [doc]

  • Discover all the RAID devices and disks which can be used to create raid array
  • Add a genesis runcmd raidconfig to configure the raid array for power server which is based on iprconfig

• Accelerate the genimage process

  • Support to use pigz to accelerate the process of creating diskless images

• Add bmcdiscover Command [manpage]

  • Discover the BMCs in a specified IP range
  • Support to define the discovered BMC to a xCAT node

• Enhance the xcatdebugmode

  • Output more debug message in the syslog of Management Node
  • Output more debug message in the console of Compute Node
  • Output more debug message for bootloader grub2

NEW xCAT Documentation

xCAT documentation has been refined and is now hosted at https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.org. Please use the new documentation and open any issues on GitHub. The original documentation is still left around on SourceForge as a reference.

Download xCAT

• xcat-core

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-core-2.11-linux.tar.bz2
  • Ubuntu - xcat-core-2.11-ubuntu.tar.bz2

• xcat-dep

  • RHEL/SLES - xcat-dep-2.11.tar.bz2 [xcat-dep-ubuntu-201511181553.tar.bz2]
  • Ubuntu - xcat-dep-ubuntu-2.11.tar.bz [xcat-dep-ubuntu-201511181553.tar.bz]

Test Environment

xCAT dependency package verified with this xCAT release:

TBD

Operating Systems which have been verified:

• RHEL 7.2 LE
• Ubuntu 14.04.03

Hardware Platform which have been verified:

• IBM Power Systems S822LC

Restrictions and Known Problems

• Issue #471: Firmware Update using xCATs rflash command is not stable enough to select accurate delay time after issuing a reset cold and starting the firmware update on IBM Power S822LC systems. If rflash fails, modify the rflash_delay attribute in site table to adjust the delay time. The default value is 120 seconds and we suggest setting this value to 70 and retry.

• Issue #71: The package util-linux cannot be upgraded to latest version in Ubuntu 14.04.3 diskless systems. The root cause is a dependency of this package has been changed.

  Work around: Run the apt-get dist-upgrade by yourself after doing a chroot into the rootimgdir.

• Issue #274: RHEL 7.2 diskless image cannot be booted up.

  Work around: disable (or blacklist) the nvidiafb driver by adding to the modprobe.blacklist:

   # chdef <noderange> -p addkcmdline="modprobe.blacklist=nvidiafb"
  

• Issue #236: The function to set the IP address of the BMC using the rspconfig for IBM Power System S822LC does not work.

  I THINK 236 IS NOT THE RIGHT ISSUE for this problem

  Work around: Recycle the power of the server after the IP address has been changed using the rspconfig to have the IP take effect.

• Issue #233: Output messages from rinv needs to be supported/corrected

• Issue #234: Output messages from rvitals need to be supported/corrected