FW: xCAT Cluster Management SW?

[Nicholas Henke]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:58:48 -0700
"Egan Ford" <egan at sense.net> wrote:

> > Is this still going to happen? I have spent the last 3 days trying
> > to get the latest release of xcat working. Here are the problems we
> > ran into ( BTW -- we have installed 2 eariler versions of xcat 
> > with minimal
> > problems. ) It would seem that the latest xcat.org debauchle 
> > has really
> > screwed the pooch.
> 
> Since I had to break out the OSS, IBM, and xCAT parts in to different
> tarballs it has lead to some confusion and undocumented missing
> commands.  xCAT 1.2.0 fixes that.
> 
> > 1) there is no updated Howto to be found. Everythink included in the
> > tarballs seems to point to xcat.org. Some updated documentation can
> > really help.
> 
> xCAT 1.2.0 has many changes and a new mini HOWTO with links to the
> other detail updated documentation.  xCAT 1.2.0 HOWTO will be written
> by Matt after 1.2.0 releases.
> 
> > 2) There are several files/programs missing, with no 
> > instructions on how
> > to find them or build them. Examples: fping, mpcli, etc.
> 
> xCAT is 3 tarballs now.  You need all three and need to extract all 3
> in the same directory.  IBM will not host the OSS parts.  Get parts 1
> and 2 from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xCAT/ and the 3 from
> http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~garrick/xcat-dist-oss-1.1.7.tgz
> 
> > 3) VERY lacking documentation on any of the hardware shipped with
> > the IBM clusters. Can you _please_ include information on the
> > ESP/ELP terminal servers? We had to spend 2 days on the phone with
> > Equinox to just get the IP address reset on an ESP. It is not that
> > tough to do, but
> > again some documentation would be nice.
> 
> That is fully documented in the xCAT 1.1.0 redbook and there is a new
> terminal server HOWTO in the xCAT 1.2.0 release.
> 
> > 4) The IBM RSA/ASMA adapter sucks. Sorry guys, but a piece of
> > hardware that is supposed to provide remote administration should 
> > _not_ fail 25%
> > of the time. It is really tiresome to have to dump power on and RSA
> > adapter just to get it to work.
> 
> Many of the problems with the RSA firmware have been resolved, please
> upgrade the firmware.    If you have a specific list of issues please
> send them directly to me.  The most common problems are related to
> improper cabling.  That is fully documented on
> http://www.pc.ibm.com/support.
> 
> 1.1.7 is stable and has been in production for 3 months.  Upgrading to
> 1.2.0 is strongly recommmended and if you can wait for 1.2.0, please
> do.
> 
> xcat.org and the mailing list with archives should be back up this
> week.
> 

Egan -- thank you for the replies. I appologize for not emailing you
directly with these concerns. I really look forward to the updates!

 
Nic
-- 
Nicholas Henke
Linux Cluster Systems Programmer
Liniac Project - Univ. of Pennsylvania