Daniel Hilst
1b81af0d1d
An xCAT management node must serve time to its compute nodes (they point at ntpservers=<xcatmaster>). Ubuntu ships only systemd-timesyncd, an SNTP client that disciplines the local clock but cannot serve time, and makentp supports chronyd and ntpd only. On a stock Ubuntu MN makentp therefore fails outright with "Please make sure ntpd is installed", reddening reg_linux_diskfull_installation_flat. Two further defects compound it. setupntp hard-requires hwclock through check_exec_or_exit, but Ubuntu 24.04 moved hwclock into util-linux-extra, which is absent from minimal images -- so the whole NTP setup, including the clock step that does not need hwclock at all, aborts. And systemd-timesyncd is part of systemd rather than a time-daemon package, so it coexists at the package level and keeps disciplining the clock against whichever daemon xCAT just configured. Assert a shared, unit-tested daemon selector in the spirit of xCAT::DHCP::Backend, the package dependencies that guarantee a server-capable daemon and hwclock, and the setupntp changes. All fail today. 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
Documentation
xCAT Documentation is hosted on Read The Docs: https://xcat-docs.readthedocs.io
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xCAT is made available under the EPL license: https://opensource.org/licenses/eclipse-1.0.php
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