Hello, I'm new to xcat but I've already played with it for some time and read the doc quite a few time as well.
At this stage, I've got a running setup consisting of a master node and 3 stateless images. I've managed to configure ipmi successfully, run an image (as in runimage) and boot a stateless image. Still me and my colleague working on it have some remaining basic or general questions whose answers hopefully will get us out of the learning curve to a clear understanding of how things are supposed to work : 1. rpm installed in the rootimg at the genimage stage : Though it seems to work as expected, we've encountered messages like : Installing : 1:telnet-0.17-48.el6.x86_64 224/224 cat: /proc/cmdline: No such file or directory cat: /proc/cmdline: No such file or directory or warning: %posttrans(nfs-utils-1:1.2.3-64.el6.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 6 Non-fatal POSTTRANS scriptlet failure in rpm package 1:nfs-utils-1.2.3-64.el6.x86_64 /proc issue : is /proc bind-mounted or something like that while installing rpms in the chroot ? Should I worry about such a message ? rpm script failed : as a matter of fact the script inside the rpm issues some init.d/rpcgssd|nfs|nfslock condrestart and I guess nothing is running of course. Still the general question is : are we at risk that some pre or post rpm install script (script embbeded in the rpm) failure because yum works in a chroot environement ? If so, wouldn't that be a real problem ? 2. the chain table I try to avoid tabedit-ing xcat tables as much as possible and use the xcat (especially chdef) commands instead (I guess it's a good practice). However, I didn't find any way other than tabedit-ing the chain table to perform more than one action when deploying a node. As a matter of fact, I'm unable to state "do a runcmd=bmcsetup, then do a runimage=....tgz, then boot the osimage <image>" with a (single) nodeset command. When I want to start from scratch again (redeploy a node), I haven't found anything else than : a) rmnodecfg <node> b) rpower <node reset> providing that the chain table was previously tabedit-ed with something like : "tars",,,"runcmd=bmcsetup,runimage=http://xcat-tars/install/sum_activate/sum_activate.tgz,osimage=centos6.7-x86_64-netboot-compute",,, Is there a better way to do that ? 3. postscripts a) I don't see the difference between postscripts and postbootscripts in the case of a stateless image deployment : am I right ? Both seem to be executed at the exact same stage of init.d b) my understanding is that any action that updatenode can perform (install packages, run scripts, sync files) is in fact implemented by a postscript. But as I tried to follow what the /opt/xcat/xcatdsklspost wrapper did, I came with the following questions : - why does it seem to build twice the mypostscript launcher - at least in some code path (first calling getpostscript.awk, then just putting in it the run_ps code) ? - will postscripts be run by genimage or packimage (isn't it the way it install rpms ?) If yes, won't they be run twice (first by genimage/packimage, and then at boot init.d time of the stateless node) ? Does it make sense to run a postscript "in the image" ? Or maybe just a subset of all the postscripts are run at image generation/packing ? On the other hand, unlike synclist or pkglist, postscripts are a propriety of the node object (as opposed to an osimage object propriety). So it wouldn't all the more make sense to run them at the image generation stage. But then again : what about the script which run pkgs or otherpkgs ? I mean, rpms are indeed installed in the image... 4. overlapping groups It seems to me that, if for some reason you've got 2 groups of nodes (at least in the same table - let's say chain for instance) with a non empty intersection, they'll be "flattened" for that node : For instance, if in chain nodex is a member of group1 (runcmd=bmcsetup) AND a member of group2 (osimage=<image>), it will end up, when deployed with bmc setup AND booted on <image> : is this correct ? Thanks and sorry for the long post ;-) -- Thomas HUMMEL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ xCAT-user mailing list xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user