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XCAT_2.12.1_Release_Notes

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Xiaopeng Wang edited this page Jul 6, 2016 · 17 revisions

New Functions and Changes in Behavior

New Features

  • go-xcat

    A tool to perform xCAT install.

    Refer to the xCAT download page http://xcat.org/download.html

    Steps to use go-xcat to install/update xCAT.

  #wget http://xcat.org/files/go-xcat -O - >/tmp/go-xcat
  #chmod +x /tmp/go-xcat

  #/tmp/go-xcat install (install the latest stable version of xCAT)
  #/tmp/go-xcat -x 2.12.1 install (install the specific version of xCAT)

  • New option --template for lsdef and mkdef commands

    • lsdef --template

      List all xCAT shipped template files.

    • mkdef -t node cn1 --template ppc64lekvmguest-template ip=1.1.1.1 ...

      Create a new node base on the template ppc64lekvmguest-template.

  • Enhance rinstall command

    Now the new rinstall command supports to perform the OS deployment for all the OS and ARCHs. You can leverage this command to replace the sequence of nodeset->rsetboot/rbootseq/rnetboot->rpower commands.

  rinstall <noderange> osimage=<image name>

  • Add xcatdebugmode support for diskless

    When enable the site.xcatdebugmode=1, additional debug logs will be generated for the netbooting process of diskless node.

  • Refine the discovery framework

    xCAT discovery framework has been refined to generate more reasonable logs for hardware discovery process.

    Following is an example of logs for a switch-based hardware discovery.

  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.aaadiscovery: (8335-GTB*100464A) Get a discover request
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.blade: (8335-GTB*100464A) Processing discovery request
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.blade: (8335-GTB*100464A) Error: Could not find any node
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.switch: (8335-GTB*100464A) Processing discovery request
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.switch: (8335-GTB*100464A) Find node:c910f05c29 for the discovery request
  xcat: The attribute bmcinband is specified, just remove the temp BMC node if there is
  xcat: Find BMC node-8335-gtb-100464a, so remove it
  xcat: c910f05c29 has been discovered
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.zzzdiscovery: (8335-GTB*100464A) Finish to process the discovery request
  xcat[91111]: xcat.discovery.zzzdiscovery: (8335-GTB*100464A) Successfully processed by switch method
  • xcatprobe (experimental)

xCAT Documentation

xCAT documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs: http://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io/en/2.12/

Some highlights to documentation improvements:

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

Download xCAT

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

Restrictions and Known Problems

  • Issue 1329 xCAT has problem to support slatelite against sles12.1

News

History

  • Oct 22, 2010: xCAT 2.5 released.
  • Apr 30, 2010: xCAT 2.4 is released.
  • Oct 31, 2009: xCAT 2.3 released. xCAT's 10 year anniversary!
  • Apr 16, 2009: xCAT 2.2 released.
  • Oct 31, 2008: xCAT 2.1 released.
  • Sep 12, 2008: Support for xCAT 2 can now be purchased!
  • June 9, 2008: xCAT breaths life into (at the time) the fastest supercomputer on the planet
  • May 30, 2008: xCAT 2.0 for Linux officially released!
  • Oct 31, 2007: IBM open sources xCAT 2.0 to allow collaboration among all of the xCAT users.
  • Oct 31, 1999: xCAT 1.0 is born!
    xCAT started out as a project in IBM developed by Egan Ford. It was quickly adopted by customers and IBM manufacturing sites to rapidly deploy clusters.
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