Verification

Before starting hardware discovery, ensure the following is configured to make the discovery process as smooth as possible.

Password Table

In order to communicate with IPMI-based hardware (with BMCs), verify that the xCAT passwd table contains an entry for ipmi which defines the default username and password to communicate with the IPMI-based servers.

tabdump passwd | grep ipmi

If not configured, use the following command to set usernam=ADMIN and password=admin.

chtab key=ipmi passwd.username=ADMIN passwd.password=admin

Genesis Package

The xCAT-genesis packages provides the utility to create the genesis network boot rootimage used by xCAT when doing hardware discovery. It should be installed during the xCAT install and would cause problems if missing.

Verify that the genesis-scripts and genesis-base packages are installed:

  • [RHEL/SLES]:

    rpm -qa | grep -i genesis
    
  • [Ubuntu]:

    dpkg -l | grep -i genesis
    

If missing:

  1. Install them from the xcat-dep repository using the Operating Specific package manager (yum, zypper, apt-get, etc)

    • [RHEL]:

      yum install xCAT-genesis
      
    • [SLES]:

      zypper install xCAT-genesis
      
    • [Ubuntu]:

      apt-get install xCAT-genesis
      
  2. Create the network boot rootimage with the following command: mknb ppc64.

    The genesis kernel should be copied to /tftpboot/xcat.