XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback 🚀

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.

POleszkiewicz

@stormi posted in storage category

Prevok

This post is deleted!

Prevok

I have an atypical host, a Rock Pi X. I can install 8.2.1 fine, but 8.3 beta1 and beta1-test4 do not install. All fresh installs, I haven't tried upgrading 8.2 to 8.3.

They generate different errors (I assume test4 is just more specific).

Using xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta1.iso I get:
Error occured
An unrecoverable error has occured. The error was:
Error installing packages

Using xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test4.iso:
Error occured
An unrecoverable error has occured. The error was:
Signature key import failed

Looking forward trying the official beta2 release to see if it fares better.

Anything I can test to try and pinpoint the source of the issue?

Thanks.

stormi

@Prevok Check the date is correct on your host. A bad date (years off) messes with signature verification.

Otherwise, you can get logs with ALT + RIGHT.

ThierryC01

@stormi said in XCP-ng 8.3 beta :

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-test3.iso

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

Hi,

I have updated my xcp-ng 8.3 beta 1 with this xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-test3.iso and while it boots, I have lost all my VMs and no SR are recognized, I am left with a just a server that sits on its own and I cannot connect an oldest XOA to it. If you need more info (logs, anything) tell me now as I really need my VMs back, I think I should be able to revert to the previous version if the backup worked. I only have one homelab server so this is the situation where you kind of update your live prod...

Before upgrading, I applied all the 8.3 patches that were pushed recently.

Prevok

@stormi It was the time. It was not just a bit off, it was 12 years off

Should have thought of that, we had similar issues at work with Rocky 8 servers. I naively thought the NTP servers would have prevented such issues, but I am not sure the NIC works at install time. I have never been able to get the netinstall to work off that box. Meh... this worked, thanks you very much!

stormi

@ThierryC01 Oh, I didn't think someone would upgrade from Beta1 using the ISO. Actually the test4 ISO forbids it to avoid upgrade issues.

Can you share the /var/log/installer/install-log file? (on a separate thread, where you can ping me)

ThierryC01

@stormi Thanks for your help, my VMs are back online but there is no more stats in the tab "stats" for any VM and the host, the log page gives this error multiple times:

vm.stats
{
  "id": "3c807c46-bfdc-f33a-5954-4de92bcf3f08",
  "granularity": "seconds"
}
{
  "message": "Unable to get the true granularity: 5",
  "name": "FaultyGranularity",
  "stack": "FaultyGranularity: Unable to get the true granularity: 5
    at XapiStats._getAndUpdateStats (file:///opt/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/src/xapi-stats.mjs:305:13)
    at Api.#callApiMethod (file:///opt/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/src/xo-mixins/api.mjs:445:20)"
}

stormi

This is an error another user reported through a support ticket. Do others confirm?

olivierlambert

I confirm the issue here