XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback 🚀

stormi

Thanks to both of you. I moved the fixed edk2 package to repo xcp-ng-base, so all testers will get it next time they update.

archw

@stormi
Fantastic and way to go...thanks for all your hard work!

olivierlambert

Also thanks to you @archw for your feedback, that's how we like to work

stormi

Everyone: we are about to release XCP-ng 8.3 Beta 2!

It was delayed by one month due to the UEFI issues discussed above, now fixed.

The last thing we need is your feedback on the updated installation ISO: https://updates.xcp-ng.org/tmp/xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test4.iso

I hope I have more success than with the test2 ISO for which I don't remember getting any feedback

[Update: link updated to the test4 ISO. Don't upgrade an existing XCP-ng 8.3 alpha or beta with this: just update with XO or yum instead]

wilsonqanda

@stormi after the update it seem to work well for me. Well the update from edk2 at least is working now. Haven't tried the iso.

wilsonqanda

@stormi said in XCP-ng 8.3 beta :

https://updates.xcp-ng.org/tmp/xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test3.iso

Testing it right now and migrating my VM over to see. My previous install SR was causing issue and disappearing on every restart for some reason lol (don't even know what causes it so decided to start fresh ). So decided to might as well test the "xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test3.iso" new iso you uploaded. Will provide feedback in a few minutes.

wilsonqanda

@stormi
Good things I notice on the new beta2-test3 iso:

"efi: EFI_MEMMAP is not enabled" used to take minutes is now down to 30 sec
host joins other host or pool really quickly (it sometime takes forever or doesn't work for me before until I manually toggle disconnect and reconnect) (hosts in pool always work fine but hosts from different pool was slow previously not sure why when they all start up at the same time is usually the issue especially when network is up slower than the hosts. I assume host search timeout before network is up.)
UEFI is definitely fixed now

All good feedback. No drawback yet.

Also when is NFS v4 available believe it was end of 1st quarter (March???) from what i heard is that still true?

Thanks otherwise it is good on my short test so far.

Tristis Oris

With previous iso i got some weird single problems, but can't reproduce them - mng interface resert after reboot, can't connect to XO, problems with update.
Now it works at first attempt. And it show hostname at ssh instead of ip.

also notice about "efi: EFI_MEMMAP is not enabled".

stormi

"efi: EFI_MEMMAP is not enabled" is a normal message in the context of XCP-ng. It's just a bit annoying because it raises questions for many users.

Regarding NFSv4 (more precisely: support for servers which only offer NFSv4 and not 3+4), isn't support already present?

stormi

Oh, no, you're right, its support is in the next batch of updates, which will come shortly after the release of beta 2.

Anonabhar

Hi All,

Let me first say that I am using 8.3 Beta in my home lab and I quite like it. Seems stable and all is good in the world so far..

But I was wondering something. If 8.3 is not going to be a LTR, is there any point in upgrading my production stacks to it or should I just wait for 8.4 (I presume that is what will be the LTR).

I am assuming that if you needed some latest and greatest bleeding feature (maybe TPM?) then you should go 8.3?

I just dont want to go through the trouble of upgrading everything to 8.3 and then 6 months later having to do it again for 8.4

Kind Regards,
Peg

john.c

@Anonabhar said in XCP-ng 8.3 beta :

Hi All,

Let me first say that I am using 8.3 Beta in my home lab and I quite like it. Seems stable and all is good in the world so far..

But I was wondering something. If 8.3 is not going to be a LTR, is there any point in upgrading my production stacks to it or should I just wait for 8.4 (I presume that is what will be the LTR).

I am assuming that if you needed some latest and greatest bleeding feature (maybe TPM?) then you should go 8.3?

I just dont want to go through the trouble of upgrading everything to 8.3 and then 6 months later having to do it again for 8.4

Kind Regards,
Peg

Well 8.3 is capable of IPv6 while 8.2 is only capable of IPv4 so, if support for IPv6 is required in production then testing in the lab 8.3 would help prepare for next LTS release which features of 8.3 will likely be part of.

It's also the first release to include TPM support so it helps for lab testing. As well as having enhancements and features which can only be used with it in Xen Orchestra (XO) and for organisations (XOA).

Eventually when 8.3 is released it will be stable, however it will not be long term supported. So it depends upon the delay for support, LTS releases are supported for longer than standard releases as well as more stable due to stability, security and predictable migration paths being the aim.

Standard releases are supported for a shorter time span but have higher performance, new features and support for the latest hardware.

Check out https://xcp-ng.org/docs/releases.html#lts-releases to find out the Lifecycle for LTS releases. By the End of Support of 8.2 LTS there's likely to be aimed for a new LTS before then a new LTS release. It's going to have the features of 8.3 at the very least.

Paolo

I suppose i can install new servers with xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test3.iso and then update to rc/stable release with yum update.
Am i correct?

Regards
Paolo

stormi

Ideally you'd reinstall to be sure you have a clean system without leftovers from previous test packages. We try to provide a clean update path, but we can't test all combinations of situations.

When the final release is there, you can use the installation ISO to upgrade your hosts, which will retain local SRs and metadata. Only customizations outside what the API (XAPI) offers may have to be done again.

ThierryC01

@stormi Where can we find a release notes for the beta2 ?

stormi

@ThierryC01 Mostly here: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/68789

and in a future blog post.

kait

using the 8.3 beta in my homelab
so far everything seems stable, i have not had an opportunity to try out vtpm yet but everything else workd great so far

POleszkiewicz

Any possibility to compile current ceph client packages for the 8.3 ? The ones that are in the 8.2.1 repos are pretty old

stormi

@POleszkiewicz Hi. Could you open a new discussion about this? I'm going to post to the beta thread for announcements right now.

stormi

I pushed a batch of updates to XCP-ng 8.3's base repository.

Main highlights:

Ported from XenServer 8:

Updated microcode for AMD and Intel
kernel: bug fixes
xapi: updated to version 23.31.0. Changelogs available at https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api/releases
blktap: bug fixes
openvswitch: updated to version 2.17.7
qemu: bugfixes for PCI passthrough using multifunction devices
sm: updated to 3.0.12 + various fixes
various python2 scripts and libs ported to python3

Other XCP-ng changes:

edk2: rebuilt to embed a build of ipxe-efi which fixes PXE boot in UEFI
sm: Linstor-related fixes, IPv6-related fixes
updategrub.py script, used for adding or removing a boot entry for the alternate kernel, ported to python3.

We are also about to release the Beta2 ISOs. They won't contain the above, because we froze their contents a few weeks ago, but users who would install using these will just need to update like any other XCP-ng 8.3 tester.