XCP-ng 8.3 updates announcements and testing

stormi

@Andrew Thanks for noticing that. CC @ThierryEscande

Andrew

@stormi @ThierryEscande I issued a PR for intel-e1000e to add the version for ethtool.

ph7

@stormi
My old i7 with e1000e is working fine (except the version not shoving)

olivierlambert

@Greg_E It works but it's not designed to work. I'm personally use a system like this at home (Protectli) and no issues so far after a rather intensive use.

stormi

@Andrew What does a regular linux distro output as a version for the driver? I've been told there's no version in the source code, so does it output anything?

blankOutreach

@stormi It shows the kernel version, exactly what uname -r would.

Andrew

@stormi From Debian 11:

# ethtool -i enp0s25
driver: e1000e
version: 5.10.0-34-amd64
firmware-version: 0.2-4
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:19.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: yes
supports-register-dump: yes
supports-priv-flags: yes

bufanda

Updated my Lab pool consisting of 2 Nodes this morning
Rebooted master first, then slave. No issues VMs migrated between reboots.
Couldn't see any issue til now.

olivierlambert

Updates done on 1x Intel and 1x AMD host, rebooted, no visible issues.

ThierryEscande

Hi @Andrew, @ph7, @blankOutreach and others

A new release of the Intel e1000e driver is available for testing. It's a minor release that fixes the driver version reported by ethtool, no other change. Please test this update and verify that network connectivity and features that you depend on work as expected.

ph7

@ThierryEscande
Ran some tests for 20 min
Seems to work fine

[18:39 x1 ~]# ethtool -i eth0
driver: e1000e
version: 5.10.179
firmware-version: 0.13-3
expansion-rom-version: 
bus-info: 0000:00:19.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: yes
supports-register-dump: yes
supports-priv-flags: yes

Andrew

@ThierryEscande I ran the update and it's passing good data (on an older card that worked before).

Greg_E

I finally got my lab updated and the two vms started, so far so good. Stats data is present, the first time I've seen any of my hosts pull 100% CPU. Hosts are little HP T740 thin clients with AMD V1756B processors and 64GB of ram, in a 3 host pool.

Sorry I can't bring more detail, not really doing work on my XCP lab right now, and lots of shake up around tech. space at work.

stormi

So, we owe a very big thank you to everyone here for your tests and feedback. The numerous updates that were in the xcp-ng-testing repository are now officially published to everyone:

https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/05/26/may-2025-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-3/

But stay with us, as very soon we'll have a few more updates to test, as well as refreshed installation ISOs!

flakpyro

@stormi Installed on our 2 production pools, DR and remote sites, 46 hosts total ranging from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Supermicro servers, no issues to report!

stormi

Just a heads-up to let you know that we'll soon (tonight? Tomorrow?) upload pre-releases of the refreshed installation ISOs for XCP-ng 8.3.

bufanda

@stormi Oh Damn, bad timing I shouldn't have updated my 8.2 pool last sunday

stormi

A few days late because internal tests led to a few fixes, here are the pre-release ISO images for a refreshed XCP-ng 8.3 installer:

https://repo.vates.tech/tmp/

$ cat SHA256SUMS
22deae59e7c5cff7d4691c447af9dbf27b29a372748c1844c280bdc212ef2a5f  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606-linstor-upgradeonly.pre3.iso
9a5dcc8d98949ee207d28307b8b94320d1ffd24841e34ca74e1c0f0422e5ecab  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606-netinstall.pre3.iso
4d6f5a99da0d70920bc313470ad2b14decab66038f0863ca68a2b81126ee2977  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606.pre3.iso

No need to upgrade XCP-ng 8.3 with these. It is not a new release. It's refreshed installation images, with all updates included.
When we release them, at the same time, XCP-ng 8.3 will be officially labeled LTS. Again, the existing XCP-ng 8.3 that you already use. Not a new XCP-ng release.
This is also when XOSTOR becomes officially supported in XCP-ng 8.3 .
8.2 to 8.3 upgrade with XOSTOR required a specific treatment, to get a compatible LINSTOR version installed on upgrade. This constraint we had to handle was caused by Linstor not supporting rolling upgrade. For this, we provide a dedicated upgrade ISO (-linstor-upgradeonly). After the upgrade, if there are available updates in 8.3 for linstor, then you can follow the usual update process (which also contains specific steps for XOSTOR such as updating linstor-satellite first on all hosts and restarting the services on all of them, still due to linstor not supporting rolling update. That's something that XOA's RPU handles automatically since a few releases, by the way).
Some packages are slightly newer in the ISOs than in 8.3's update repositories. The only reason is because I didn't want to push updates so soon right after the previous batch, so that XOA doesn't tell you that you are outdated and need to update. But of course these updates will also come to existing XCP-ng 8.3 hosts soon. They're not just for the ISOs.
The netinstall ISO image will pull the original 8.3.0 packages at the moment, so if you want to use it you first need to create a netinstall reposistory somewhere by extracting the full installation ISO, and point at it.

Regarding testing we are interested on all kind of feedback. Installations, upgrades with and without XOSTOR, and everything you want to test that seems pertinent to ensure there are no regressions when compared to the original 8.3.0 installation ISOs.

gb.123

@stormi said in XCP-ng 8.3 updates announcements and testing:

A few days late because internal tests led to a few fixes, here are the pre-release ISO images for a refreshed XCP-ng 8.3 installer:

https://repo.vates.tech/tmp/
$ cat SHA256SUMS
22deae59e7c5cff7d4691c447af9dbf27b29a372748c1844c280bdc212ef2a5f  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606-linstor-upgradeonly.pre3.iso
9a5dcc8d98949ee207d28307b8b94320d1ffd24841e34ca74e1c0f0422e5ecab  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606-netinstall.pre3.iso
4d6f5a99da0d70920bc313470ad2b14decab66038f0863ca68a2b81126ee2977  xcp-ng-8.3-20250606.pre3.iso
No need to upgrade XCP-ng 8.3 with these. It is not a new release. It's refreshed installation images, with all updates included.

When we release them, at the same time, XCP-ng 8.3 will be officially labeled LTS. Again, the existing XCP-ng 8.3 that you already use. Not a new XCP-ng release.

This is also when XOSTOR becomes officially supported in XCP-ng 8.3 .

This is definitely the best part... I just installed XCP-NG on my test bench (a few days back) with the previous ISOs to test the updates !
Will try this ISO as soon as I get my new PC!
Was eagerly waiting to try XOSTOR in the meantime.

Greg_E

@stormi

With 8.3 becoming LTS, what happens to 8.2.x? How long will it still receive security updates?

Trying to decide if this is a drop everything and upgrade moment, or if there is some time available before upgrading is required. While my 8.3 lab has been solid since switching (disregarding user created problems), I'm not sure I want to go through an 8.2 to 8.3 upgrade right now.

Also with 8.3 going LTS, does this mean that a 9.x Beta will be available soon? It looks like Alma just released v10 which I've read is going to be the basis for XCP-ng 9.x, or is this still a mountain of work to overcome to get to a Beta? The newer kernel functions like the NFS options is something I'm looking forward to testing.