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b4bd8b331f
makedhcp gives a netboot=ipxe node xcat/ipxe/i386/undionly.kpxe for BIOS and xcat/ipxe/x86_64-sb/snponly-shim.efi for UEFI. That shim, which Microsoft signs, loads snponly.efi from its own directory, so the node also boots with UEFI Secure Boot on: the firmware does not load snponly.efi directly, as only the iPXE Secure Boot CA signs it. The node gets its boot script from xcat/ipxe/nodes only when it reports, in option 175, the iPXE features that the script needs: HTTP, bzImage and PXE for BIOS, HTTP and EFI for UEFI. A SAN node also needs iSCSI. Every other client of the node first gets the loader above. xNBA sends the same option, but xCAT recognizes xNBA by its user class, and the upstream loader sends the user class of a firmware iPXE. The upstream loader does not have to be in the local TFTP directory, because a node can load from another TFTP server. ISC applies the test in the host statements of the node, and nests each feature test inside its architecture test: dhcpd saves a host statement in dhcpd.leases without parentheses, and omshell reads only 1023 bytes of the line that sets it. Kea applies it in the classes of the node, which carry their own first-stage loader and the purpose ipxe-boot. As for an xnba node, a node in state boot or iscsiboot gets no boot file unless it boots from SAN. The statements and classes of netboot=xnba and netboot=pxe nodes do not change.
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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