XCP-ng 8.2 updates announcements and testing

Andrew

@bleader I'll guess it's a VM guest process to process memory issue as the Xen patch is just for documentation of the issue.

The patch to Xen is simply a documentation update to clarify that an OS author
might not want to use a hypercall page.

gduperrey

New update candidates for you to test!

In addition to the previous updates, available for testing, here are some new, non-urgent ones, expected to be released in a few days. Below are the details about these.

kernel:
- Synchronized with hotfix XS82ECU1079
- Occasionally, a host that crashes is unable to produce a crash dump and becomes inoperable until it is restarted.
XAPI + xha:
- Synchronized with hotfix XS82ECU1080 that fixes these issues:
  - High availability occasionally fails to process heartbeats in time when there are a lot of hosts in a pool. Consequently, the host that is unable to process heartbeats is flagged as offline and self-fences.
  - A virtual machine (VM) on the host that is restarted during or after a connectivity issue may become unresponsive or fail to start with the error message "an emulator required to run this VM failed to start" if there are problems connecting the pool coordinator to a host in the pool.
  - Resetting the connection can cause long-running VDI migrations to fail.
  - Current up-to-date RRD data is not included in the server status report.
sm:
- Fix VG activation in LargeBlockSR for non-NVMe devices meaning than 4KiB devices other than NVMe didn't work with the driver.

XOSTOR:

drbd: Prevent a dead-lock in some situations, plus other improvements.
linstor: Updated from version 1.21.1 to 1.29.0.
http-nbd-transfer: improved for faster and more reliable HA.
sm (specific release for XOSTOR):
- Add the same fixe as in the common sm.
- Update for latest linstor, drbd and http-nbd-transfer.
- XOSTOR Fixes.

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up to date host:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

The usual update rules apply: pool coordinator first, etc.

If you are using Xostor on your test servers, be sure to read our documentation on updating Xostor. You will need to enable an additional repo. Replace the yum update command above with this one:

yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing,xcp-ng-linstor-testing

Versions

forkexecd: 1.18.3-15.1.xcpng8.2
gpumon: 0.18.0-23.1.xcpng8.2
kernel: 4.19.19-7.0.24.1.xcpng8.2
message-switch: 1.23.2-22.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-rrd-transport: 1.16.1-20.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-rrdd-plugin: 1.9.1-20.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-tapctl: 1.5.1-20.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-xcp-idl: 1.96.7-9.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-xen-api-client: 1.9.0-23.1.xcpng8.2
ocaml-xen-api-libs-transitional: 2.25.7-4.1.xcpng8.2
rrd2csv: 1.2.6-20.1.xcpng8.2
rrdd-plugins: 1.10.9-17.1.xcpng8.2
sm-cli: 0.23.0-66.1.xcpng8.2
squeezed: 0.27.0-23.1.xcpng8.2
varstored-guard: 0.6.2-20.xcpng8.2
vhd-tool: 0.43.0-23.1.xcpng8.2
wsproxy: 1.12.0-24.xcpng8.2
xapi: 1.249.40-1.1.xcpng8.2
xapi-nbd: 1.11.0-22.1.xcpng8.2
xapi-storage: 11.19.0_sxm2-22.xcpng8.2
xapi-storage-script: 0.34.1-21.1.xcpng8.2
xcp-networkd: 0.56.2-20.xcpng8.2
xcp-rrdd: 1.33.5-3.1.xcpng8.2
xenopsd: 0.150.19-8.1.xcpng8.2
xha: 10.3.1-3.1.xcpng8.2
xs-opam-repo: 6.35.13-5.xcpng8.2

If you're using XOSTOR, there are these versions too:

drbd: 9.28.0-1.el7
drbd-reactor: 1.4.1-1
kmod-drbd: 9.2.11-1.1.xcpng8.2
linstor: 1.29.0-1.el7_9
linstor-client: 1.23.0-1.xcpng8.2
python-linstor: 1.23.0-1.xcpng8.2
sm: 2.30.8-13.2.0.linstor.1.xcpng8.2

What to test

Normal use and anything else you want to test. The closer to your actual use of XCP-ng, the better. It would be nice if you could specify in your feedback if you are using XOSTOR or not.

Test window before official release of the updates

~ 2 days

JeffBerntsen

It's installed and seems to be working well in my test pool so far, not using XOSTOR.

Andrew

@gduperrey Installed and working on a HA pool and other hosts, no XOSTOR.

gduperrey

Update published: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/01/23/january-2025-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-2-lts/

Thank you for the tests!

gduperrey

New update candidates for you to test!

A new batch of non-urgent updates is ready for user tests before a future collective release. Below are the details about these.

intel-igc: Fix a possible update issue due to a recent package name change.
microcode_ctl:
- Latest Intel release microcode-20250211:
  - Security updates for:
    - INTEL-SA-01166, INTEL-SA-01213, INTEL-SA-01139, INTEL-SA-01228
    - Updates for multiple functional issues
    - Upstream update drops files for older Sapphire Rapids steppings, we kept the previous versions
netdata:
- Update to Netdata v1.44.3
  - Fix dmesg warnings due to setuid+capabilities on xenstat plugin
  - The freeipmi plugin now comes in a separate package
  - Improve systemd service restart with a custom script waiting for Netdata to be fully up-and-running before stopping it.
openvswitch:
- Synchorized with XS82ECU1081. Alignement with the hotfix, no functional changes.
- Fix CVE-2022-4337 & CVE-2022-4338 when parsing malformed AutoAttach
qemu: Fix CVE-2023-3354, which could cause QEMU to crash when handling multiple VNC connections. If an incorrect response is received while closing a connection—whether due to a bug or intentional manipulation—it could trigger this issue.
xapi:
- Synchronized with XS82ECU1084: Fixes a behavior that could occur when changing masters in a pool with a large number of hosts. In this context, it was sometimes no longer possible to connect certain pool management software.
xcp-ng-xapi-plugins:
- Add new service plugin to manage (start, stop, ...) XCP-ng services
- Add a new ipmitool plugin to get information from ipmitool that:
  - Returns information about sensors
  - Returns IPMI LAN information
xen:
- Synchronized with hotfix XS82ECU1082 from Citrix
  - Fix watchdog setup on Intel Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids platforms.
  - Reduce PCI config reads
  - Prevent early exit from i8259 loop detection on systems with multiple IO-APICs
  - Fix incomplete reduction of PCI config reads
- Fix XSA-467 / CVE-2025-1713

XOSTOR:

sm (specific release for XOSTOR): Ensure that coalesces run correctly on LINSTOR volumes that have been previously resized.

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up to date host:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

The usual update rules apply: pool coordinator first, etc.

If you are using XOSTOR on your test servers, be sure to read our documentation on updating XOSTOR. You will need to enable an additional repo. Replace the yum update command above with this one:

yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing,xcp-ng-linstor-testing

Versions

intel-igc: 5.10.214-3.3.xcpng8.2
microcode_ctl: 2.1-26.xs29.7.xcpng8.2
netdata: 1.44.3-1.2.xcpng8.2
openvswitch: 2.5.3-2.3.14.2.xcpng8.2
qemu: 4.2.1-4.6.4.2.xcpng8.2
xapi: 1.249.41-1.1.xcpng8.2
xcp-ng-xapi-plugins: 1.12.0-2.xcpng8.2
xen: 4.13.5-9.48.2.xcpng8.2

If you're using XOSTOR, there is also this version:

sm: 2.30.8-13.2.0.linstor.2.xcpng8.2

What to test

Normal use and anything else you want to test. The closer to your actual use of XCP-ng, the better. It would be nice if you could specify in your feedback if you are using Xostor or not.

Test window before official release of the updates

~ 4/5 days

bleader

Home host, no XOSTOR, updated fine, no issue with my usual VMs.

JeffBerntsen

Installed on my test server, not running XOSTOR, everything seems to be working fine so far.

gduperrey

Update published: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/03/12/march-2025-security-and-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-2-lts/

Thank you for the tests!

stormi

New security update candidates for you to test!

Yet more vulnerabilities in Intel hardware, addressed in two complementary ways: patching Xen and updating Intel microcode.

Together with this security update, will also publish a patched XAPI to fix a minor issue with information reporting from VM to hypervisor.

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up-to-date host:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-candidates
yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-candidates
reboot

The usual update rules apply: pool coordinator first, etc.

Versions

microcode_ctl: 2.1-26.xs29.8.xcpng8.2 (weird identifier for historical reasons, but that's actually Intel microcode published by them yesterday)
xen: 4.13.5-9.49.1.xcpng8.2
xapi: 1.249.41-1.2.xcpng8.2

What to test

Normal use and anything else you want to test. The closer to your actual use of XCP-ng, the better.

Test window before official release of the updates

~24h. That's an urgent one.

JeffBerntsen

Installed and seems to be running fine so far on my test systems.