ppc64le compatibility with connAuthFile

[Michael Robbert]

We have a cluster where most of the nodes, including all the BeeGFS servers, are running CentOS 7.9 on x86_64 hardware with BeeGFS 7.2.9. We do have a handful of Power8 and Power9 nodes, but users haven't been using them so they haven't been connected to BeeGFS for some time, but were working at some time in the past.

I recently wanted to try some stuff on one of the Power9 nodes and built BeeGFS 7.2.9 from source on this node. It looks like everything built correctly and we've copied the config files to this host just like all the other clients, but when I try to start the client it won't connect to the Mgmt server which logs these errors:

(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker4 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33666
(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker2 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33676
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33692
(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker2 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33698
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33708
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33712
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33728
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33734
(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker4 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33736
(2) May26 13:47:57 DirectWorker1 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33738
(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker4 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33742
(2) May26 13:47:57 Worker2 [AuthenticateChannel incoming] >> Peer sent wrong authentication: 172.18.20.207:33758

One thing that has changed since we last had the Power nodes connected was that we added the connAuthFile. I have double checked that the md5sum of the file is the same on this client and the server so it should be working, but it isn't. Does anybody have a setup like this that is know to work or are there any known bugs or compatibility issues with x86_64 servers and ppc64le clients?

Thanks,

Mike Robbert