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

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 ppc64le

Highlighted Functions

• 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 of the Genesis Kernel to a specific interface in the dhcpinterfaces keyword in the site table See noboot for more information

• 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.

• Documentation updated to help users configure a simple RAID1 across 2 disks on RHEL 7.x Operating Systems. documentation 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-ubuntu.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 2225 Stale rootimg.gz file left in the rootimg dir caused node boot failed
• Issue 2209 Clearly define the method for configuration of RAID

Restrictions and Known Issues

• Issue 2130 Old diskless image built by xCAT can not be used after xcat 2.12.2. Compatiability was broken, you may need to remove and re-generate the diskless images if you experience this issue.