XCAT_2.9.1_Release_Notes

** Note: The 2.9.1 release notes is still under construction, 2.9.1 is not released yet ***

• New Function and Changes in Behavior
• Test Environment
• Key Bug fixes
• Restrictions and Known Problems

New Function and Changes in Behavior

• RHEL 7.1 support on x86_64, ppc64 and ppc64le platforms
  • Diskful and diskless
  • Running xCAT management node on RHEL 7.1
• Ubuntu 14.04.02 support on x86_64 and ppc64le platforms
  • Diskful and diskless
  • Running xCAT management node on Ubuntu 14.04.02
  • Nvidia GPU configuration on IBM Power 8 servers is not support
• Support Local Mirror for Ubuntu diskfull and diskless OS deployment. This is useful in the case your xCAT MN cannot access internet or the network bandwidth is not good.
• Ubuntu hierarchy
  • MariaDB is the only supported database for Ubuntu hierarchy
• SLES 12 diskless support
• Energy management for IBM Power 8 servers
  • Power consumption information
  • Hardware vitals: temperature, fanspeed, CPU speed, etc.
  • Power saving
  • The energy management for IBM Power 8 servers uses a new mechanism, it does not depends on xCAT Energy Management Plug-in xCAT-pEnergy any more.
  • The setting operation for IBM Power 8 server is only supported for the server which is running in PowerVM mode, Do NOT run the setting for the server which is running in OPAL mode.
• RHEL 7.1 LE -> RHEL 7.1 BE mixed cluster support
  • Manage and deploy RHEL 7.1 BE compute nodes from RHEL 7.1 LE management node
  • RHEL 7.1 BE -> RHEL 7.1 LE mixed configuration should also work, but was not formally tested
• Node attribute primarynic is deprecated, installnic could be used to specify the installation nic, if it is blank, the installnic will be default to the nic associates with the mac address specified by the mac attribute.
• New column nicextraparams is added to the nics table, which could be used to specify arbitrary nic configuration parameters work with confignics postscript.
• Docker support in xCAT(experimental)
  • See the doc xCAT Docker Image
• Using confluent to replace conserver(experimental). A document was added to describe how to setup xCAT-confluent as xCAT console server.
• To avoid the Poodle Attack, set TLSv1 as default SSL version for all the SSL connection in xCAT.
• The GPG key for xCAT pkgs has been changed to 'xCAT Security Key'.
• Enhance the command restartxcatd to support the 'fast restart xcatd' for systemd enabled system.
• Support two new netboot methods: grub2-tftp and grub2-http. They can be used to control the communication protocol for grub2.

Test Environment

Key Bug fixes

Get all the bugs which were fixed in 2.9.1 release from 2.9.1 defects.

Restrictions and Known Problems

• "syncfiles" postscript does not work for file syncing during rh7 installation, but it works fine in updatenode process. The workaround is to prefix the "/mnt/sysimage" to the destination directory. See defect 4579 for details.
• For some P8LE bare metal machine, when using "rsetboot <node> net" to start network install, the installing will hang at petitboot screen after installation. The workaround is to reboot the node with command "rsetboot <node> hd" and "rpower <node> reset". See defect 4611 for details. </node></node></node>
• Postscript 'confignics -s' does not work for sles12. See defect 4565 for details.
• For Redhat7.0 provisioning, there might be some warnings on deprecated kernel/anaconda options. See defect 4613 for details.