OS updates

OS update packages can be added to the system to update existing OS distributions in your system.

IBM® Spectrum Cluster Foundation Community Edition manages all operating system (OS) installation resources for the cluster, which includes the OS update packages. OS updates are stored in the /install/osdistroupdates directory and can be applied to compute nodes. For example, after the OS update is created, it is stored in the /install/osdistroupdates/OS-update-name directory.

Adding an OS update on provisioned compute nodes can change the system configuration files or upgrade some software packages to a higher version. If you remove or change an OS update, you must reinstall the compute nodes if the new OS update does not fully contain the current OS update. Reinstalling the compute nodes ensures that the system configuration files on the compute nodes are compatible with the new OS update.

To view the OS distribution updates that are associated with a selected OS distribution select the Resources tab, go to Node Provisioning > OS Distributions and click the OS Updates tab. All of the completed OS updates that are currently in the system and associated with the OS distribution are displayed here.

The following table lists a description of the status items for an OS distribution.

Table 1. OS distribution attributes
Attributes	Description
Name	Name of the operating system distribution
OS	Operating system
Version	Version number of the operating system
Architecture	Operating system architecture
OS Type	Operating system type
Updates	Number of OS distribution updates

Examples

To get a list of all OS distributions, run the following command:

# lsdef -t osdistro

This list returns a list of OS distribution names.

To view all completed OS updates for a specific OS distribution, run the following command:

# pcmosdistroupdate -l rhels7.2-x86_64

where rhels7.2-x86_64 is the name of the OS distribution.