Updated installer for XCP-ng 8.2.1

Release Dec 11, 2023

We are happy to announce the release of updated installation images for XCP-ng 8.2.1.

They include all the security and maintenance updates published since the initial release of XCP-ng 8.2.1 (almost 2 years ago!), as well as improved hardware support and drivers. As a reminder, the blog post from the 8.2.1 announcement:

☝️ FAQ

You might have some questions, so we made some answers 😜

Is this a new XCP-ng release?

Not exactly. We provide refreshed installation images, but the system they will install remains the same XCP-ng 8.2.1, except that you have less updates to apply just after the installation.

Should I upgrade my XCP-ng 8.2.1 with these?

Absolutely not. Everything which is on the installation images was already pushed as regular updates to XCP-ng 8.2.1.

Where to download the new installation ISOs from?

Any new downloads from our website will give you the latest version of the ISOs. The previous ISOs are still available on mirrors.

Let's now talk about the changes brought to the installer itself.

✨ Improvements

Here is the list of things fixed while having the new ISO.

On some hardware, the installer would not start, due an issue in Xen with AMD IOMMU. We debugged this issue with the user community and Xen developers, which led to fixes in our build of Xen.

This release of the installer includes the fixed Xen binary.

Forum thread: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/5652/panic-on-cpu-0-xen-bug-at-iommu-init-c-1419

Solved missing display on Intel NUC 10 and above

XCP-ng can be installed on these small devices, especially in a homelab setup. Our installer had issues on recent models because it was failing to enable the display. This was fixed in a patched build of the Linux kernel. Yet another issue debugged and solved together with our marvelous user community.

Forum thread: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/5596/intel-nuc10-nuc11-woes-nuc8-is-alright

Compatibility with newer CPUs

Backports from the Xen Project brought in better compatibility with recent CPU lines from Intel and AMD.

Support for new RAID cards in Dell servers

On our technical support's request, we included a new driver (mpi3mr) to support these devices (SAS4116W) which can be commonly found in recent Dell servers.

Popular network drivers for home lab

With the help of users from our community (most notably Andrew64k who contributed the largest part of the work), our installer now supports network chipsets which tend to become common in the home lab community.