xCAT Genesis BaseΒΆ

xCAT ships a xCAT-genesis-base package as part of xcat-deps. This is a light-weight diskless linux image based currently on Fedora28, that is used by xCAT to do hardware discovery.

Follow the steps below to build your own version of the xCAT-genesis-base on-site. You can include additional drivers or modules or you can build your own version of the xCAT-genesis-base on-site using a server running OS other than Fedora28, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Building xCAT-genesis-base on a server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or earlier, is no longer supported.

  1. Download the latest timestamp version of the xCAT-genesis-builder RPM provided here: http://xcat.org/files/xcat/xcat-dep/2.x_Linux/beta/

  2. Install the xCAT-genesis-builder RPM on a node installed with desired OS (currently verified with Fedora28 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8). For more details: https://github.com/xcat2/xcat-core/tree/master/xCAT-genesis-builder#readme

  3. If additional drivers or modules need to be loaded when genesis kernel boots, edit xCAT-genesis-builder/xcat-cmdline.sh and add modprobe statements for each one.

  4. Build the new xCAT-genesis-base RPM:

    /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/genesis/builder/buildrpm

To use the generated RPM from the step above for node discovery:

  1. Uninstall the old xCAT-genesis-base RPM and install the newly built xCAT-genesis-base RPM on the xCAT Management node
  2. Execute: mknb ppc64
  3. Follow discover nodes