XCAT Installation on Centos 7

Base Level Setup

Note: Starting point Centos minimal 7 with networking in place and setup

We start by setting the hostname and disabling SElinux

setenforce 0
sed -i 's/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=disabled/g' /etc/sysconfig/selinux 
yum -y install vim tmux wget rsyslog
systemctl enable rsyslog
systemctl start rsyslog

Setup naming and hosts file

Set the hostname

hostnamectl set-hostname deploy.dt.internal 

Set the /etc/hosts file

# Ensure there is a /etc/hosts entry for the internal interface

192.168.102.253 deploy.dt.internal      deploy

Disable the firewall

Disable the firewall

systemctl disable firewalld
systemctl stop firewalld

Setup the software repos

yum -y install yum-utils
wget --no-check-certificate -P /etc/yum.repos.d https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/latest/xcat-core/xcat-core.repo

yum -y install centos-release-stream
wget --no-check-certificate -P /etc/yum.repos.d https://xcat.org/files/xcat/repos/yum/xcat-dep/rh8/x86_64/xcat-dep.repo

Download CentOS

wget http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.centos.org/7.9.2009/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2009.iso

Define Compute image for provisioning

copycds ${iso_path}/CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1908.iso (where ${iso_path} is directory of the iso)

Enable ssh during the installation on the compute nodes

# enables ssh to the node during installation
chdef -t site clustersite xcatdebugmode=2
lsdef -t site clustersite

Enable the time service (Chronyd)

# add to the end of the file /etc/chrony.conf (note below for Indonesia, select correct tz)
echo "
server 1.id.pool.ntp.org
server 2.id.pool.ntp.org
server 3.id.pool.ntp.org
server 4.id.pool.ntp.org" >> /etc/chrony.conf

systemctl enable chronyd
systemctl start chronyd

Add a node to the installation

# add a node
# note: serialport=0 (ttyS0)
#       serialport=1 (ttyS1)
# replace each parameter with appropriate information
[root@deploy ~]# mkdef -t node node0001 groups=compute,all ip=192.168.102.10 mac=00:15:B2:AA:E2:60 netboot=xnba arch=x86_64 bmc=192.168.101.10 bmcusername=admin bmcpassword=admin mgt=ipmi serialport=0 serialspeed=115200 provmethod=centos7.9-x86_64-install-compute
1 object definitions have been created or modified.

# set the root password
chtab key=system passwd.username=root passwd.password=`openssl rand -base64 12`

# set the domain name
chdef -t site domain=dt.internal 

Finalise the setup - below will create the /tftpboot files and /etc/hosts etc.

# finalise the setup 
# Complete network service configurations
makehosts
makenetworks 
makedhcp -n
makedns -n

Set the nodes to pxeboot