rhpctl addnode gihome: specify HUB or LEAF when adding new nodes to a Flex Cluster

I have a customer trying to add a new node to a cluster using Fleet Patching and Provisioning.

The error in the command output is not very friendly:

The “RHPHELP_preNodeAddVal” might already give an idea of the cause: something related to the “cluvfy stage -pre nodeadd” evaluation that we normally do when adding a node by hand. FPP does not really run cluvfy, but it calls the same primitives cluvfy is based on.

In FPP, when the error does not give any useful information, this is the flow to follow:

  • use “rhpctl query audit” to get the date and time of the failing operation
  • open the “rhpserver.log.0” and look for the operation log in that time frame
  • get the UID of the operation e.g., in the following line it is “1556344143”:

  • Isolate the log for the operation: grep $UID rhpserver.log.0 > $UID.log
  • Locate the trace file of the rhphelper remote execution:

  • Find the root cause in the rhphelper trace:

In this case, the target cluster is a Flex Cluster, so the command must be run specifying the node_role.

The documentation is not clear (we will fix it soon):

node_role must be specified for Flex Clusters, and it must be either HUB or LEAF.

After using the correct command line, the command succeeded.

HTH

Ludovico

Changing FPP temporary directory (/tmp in noexec and other issues)

When using FPP, you might experience the following error (PRVF-7546):

This is often related to the filesystem /tmp that has the “noexec” option:

Although it is tempting to just remount the filesystem with “exec”, you might be in this situation because your systems are configured to adhere to the STIG recommendations:

The noexec option must be added to the /tmp partition (https://www.stigviewer.com/stig/red_hat_enterprise_linux_6/2016-12-16/finding/V-57569)

FPP 19.9 contains fix 30885598 that allows specifying the temporary location for FPP operations:

After that, the operation should run smoothly:

HTH

Ludo