What's New

This document supports the Cumulus Linux 5.16 release, and lists new features and enhancements.

• For a list of open and fixed issues in Cumulus Linux 5.16, see the Cumulus Linux 5.16 Release Notes.
• To upgrade to Cumulus Linux 5.16, first check the Release Considerations below, then follow the steps in Upgrading Cumulus Linux.

What’s New in Cumulus Linux 5.16

Cumulus Linux 5.16 contains new features and improvements, and provides bug fixes.

New Features and Enhancements

• BFD offload
• BGP conditional disaggregation
• BGP PIC anycast
• 802.1X preserve dynamically assigned IPv6 addresses
• Manage automatic cl-support file generation
• Extended traceroute (RFC 5837)
• VRF-aware DHCP relay
• Show FIB table entries
• ACL matches on packet inner header and ACL matches on packet offset
• Clear QoS buffers on multiple interfaces
• TACACS per-command authorization supports NVUE tab completion, option listing (?), and command history navigation
• Clear control plane policer counters
• LAG hash randomizer for adaptive routing
• Tx squelch control (Beta)
• Support for EVPN VXLAN over an IPv6 underlay (Beta)
• 802.1x dynamic VRF assignment (Beta)
• PPS mode for QoS egress shapers
• Extra threshold for QoS lossy priority groups
• New FRR high severity ERROR log messages
• The SDK health monitoring service handles recovery and debug dump collection when detecting SDK health issues
• NVUE support for both unset and set commands for the same object in a single patch
• Security features:
  • FIPS mode
  • Maximum SSH sessions allowed for a user and for a user group
  • NVUE support for TACACS local fallback authentication
  • 802.1X reauthentication
  • Yubikey authentication over RADIUS
  • Configure syslog messages to include the date and time events occur, the source IP and username for NVUE commands, and when dynamic kernel modules load and unload
  • HTTP response compression for API responses
• Telemetry
  • You can now use Open telemetry export and gNMI streaming at the same time.
  • New, updated, and deprecated gNMI Metrics
  • New and deprecated OTEL Metrics
• NVUE:
  • New and Removed NVUE Commands.

Release Considerations

Review the following considerations before you upgrade to Cumulus Linux 5.16.

Upgrade Requirements

You can use optimized image upgrade and package upgrade to upgrade the switch to Cumulus Linux 5.16 from Cumulus Linux 5.14 and later. Package upgrade supports ISSU (warm boot) for these upgrade paths.

To upgrade to Cumulus Linux 5.16 from a release that does not support package upgrade or optimized image upgrade, you can install an image with ONIE.

Maximum Number of NVUE Revisions

Cumulus Linux includes an option to set the maximum number of revisions after which NVUE deletes older revisions automatically. The default setting is 100. If you upgrade to Cumulus Linux 5.16 from 5.12 or earlier, the first time you run nv set or nv unset commands, NVUE deletes older revisions if the number of revisions on the switch is greater than 100.

Linux Configuration Files Overwritten

If you use Linux commands to configure the switch, read the following information before you upgrade to Cumulus Linux 5.16.

NVUE includes a default startup.yaml file. In addition, NVUE enables configuration auto save by default. As a result, NVUE overwrites any manual changes to Linux configuration files on the switch when the switch reboots after upgrade, or you change the cumulus user account password with the Linux passwd command.

To prevent Cumulus Linux from overwriting manual changes to the Linux configuration files when the switch reboots or when changing the cumulus user account password with the passwd command, follow the steps below before you upgrade to 5.16 or after a new binary image installation:

1. Disable NVUE auto save:

cumulus@switch:~$ nv set system config auto-save state disabled
cumulus@switch:~$ nv config apply
cumulus@switch:~$ nv config save

2. Delete the /etc/nvue.d/startup.yaml file:

   cumulus@switch:~$ sudo rm -rf /etc/nvue.d/startup.yaml
   

3. Add the PASSWORD_NVUE_SYNC=no line to the /etc/default/nvued file:

   cumulus@switch:~$ sudo nano /etc/default/nvued
   PASSWORD_NVUE_SYNC=no
   

DHCP Lease with the host-name Option

When a Cumulus Linux switch with NVUE enabled receives a DHCP lease containing the host-name option, it ignores the received hostname and does not apply it. For details, see this knowledge base article.

NVUE Commands After Upgrade

After you upgrade to Cumulus Linux, running NVUE configuration commands might override configuration for features that are now configurable with NVUE and removes configuration you added manually to files or with automation tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet. To keep your configuration, you can do one of the following:

• Update your automation tools to use NVUE.
• Configure NVUE to ignore certain underlying Linux files when applying configuration changes.
• Use Linux and FRR (vtysh) commands instead of NVUE for all switch configuration.

Cumulus VX

NVIDIA no longer releases Cumulus VX as a standalone image. To simulate a Cumulus Linux switch, use NVIDIA AIR.