Daniel Hilst
067eda810e
Add xCAT::NTP::Backend, a selector for the NTP daemon xCAT configures, in the same spirit as xCAT::DHCP::Backend. It honours site.ntpbackend, defaults per distro family (EL7+/SLES15+ chrony, older ntpd, Ubuntu/Debian chrony), and downgrades to whichever of chrony/ntpd is actually installed rather than installing a second daemon. makentp selects through it instead of probing /usr/sbin/chronyd directly, so the choice is one unit-tested code path. Guarantee the daemon at install time: the xcat metapackage now Depends on "chrony | ntp" and the xCAT rpm Requires "(chrony or ntp)". Both sit beside the existing service dependencies the metapackage already declares -- isc-dhcp-server|kea, apache2, nfs-kernel-server -- because an MN that cannot serve time cannot serve its compute nodes, and Ubuntu's default systemd-timesyncd is a client only. Stop requiring hwclock in setupntp. It only persists the already-stepped system clock to the RTC, and Ubuntu 24.04 moved it to util-linux-extra, absent on minimal images -- so a fatal check_exec_or_exit aborted the entire NTP setup, including the clock step that does not use it. Use it when present, log and continue when not, and pull util-linux-extra through Recommends and the diskless pkglist so it usually is. Disable systemd-timesyncd there too. It ships as part of systemd rather than a time-daemon package, so nothing displaces it, and it keeps disciplining the clock against the daemon being configured. Signed-off-by: Daniel Hilst <392820+dhilst@users.noreply.github.com>
xCAT
xCAT is a toolkit for deployment and administration of clusters of all sizes.
The xCAT sunset was only a quick eclipse
Dear xCAT Community,
The xCAT sunset has changed course. VersatusHPC has been invited to join the xCAT Consortium, and future development will move toward direct upstream contributions coordinated with the Consortium and its existing member companies.
That matters most for Enterprise Linux 10 (EL10). EL10 support is coming to xCAT, restoring a future operating-system path for sites that still rely on xCAT. This is an important change from the previous sunset guidance, where the lack of an EL10 path was one of the strongest reasons to move away from xCAT.
The xCAT Consortium continues to recommend Confluent as the long-term successor to xCAT, and that remains the Consortium position. Users planning new cluster-management deployments should evaluate Confluent and its xCAT comparison documentation.
At the same time, xCAT is no longer sunsetted. The Consortium and participating companies will continue updating xCAT while there is community and user demand for it.
In summary:
- xCAT development is continuing upstream through the Consortium and participating companies.
- Enterprise Linux 10 support is coming.
- Confluent remains the Consortium-recommended successor and migration path.
- xCAT updates will continue while there is community and user demand.
We want to thank the xCAT Consortium and community for keeping this project moving. The sun went behind the moon for a moment, but xCAT is still here.
For more information on Confluent and how to get started, please visit the Confluent: Project Page, Documentation or Confluent vs xCAT comparison.
With thanks,
The xCAT Consortium
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