Updates announcements and testing

stormi

Note (for you or anyone coming here later): rollback/downgrade is not officially supported, because it's not tested, and it is not always possible to ensure that it really brings the exact previous state. You wouldn't rollback a XAPI update that modified the structure of the XAPI db, for example. However for many packages it's safe to attempt it. The September update, that only contains xen packages IIRC, is one of the updates that should be easy and safe to revert.

jmccoy555

@stormi thanks as always. If I do find the issue I'll let you know..... if I break everything then I'll just get a

jmccoy555

It appears that the rollback worked, but doesn't appear to have an impact on my issue, which is good news in a way.

stormi

Let's test the next train of updates

I have various updates ready and tested internally that are eager to be pushed officially. All they need is a bit of user feedback, and that's why we're all on this thread right?

What changes

Updated ca-certificates removes an expired root certificate that was used by Let's Encrypt, in order to workaround a limitation of the old version of openssl included in XCP-ng when the chain of trust contains an expired certificate, even when another path would allow to verify the certificate. Basically, this just means that wget would fail on most HTTPS URLs that use a Let's Encrypt certificate, and now it won't fail anymore.
Updated kernel (bugfix update, already detailed above and tested by some of you)
Update (2021-10-27): new patches synced from new [Citrix hotfix](https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX330706). Removes spurious kernel warnings and supposedly increases the "resiliency" of the kernel (ie, bugs were fixed).
Updated grub fixes a booting issue with buggy UEFI firmware that only wants to boot from EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI... Or worse, firmware that doesn't really boot from this file but won't boot if the file doesn't exist...
Updated xcp-featured fixes a bug that made the Pool Secret Rotation feature (something you rarely need - as no one reported the issue - but can be useful sometimes) unavailable.
Updated guest-templates-json* packages add a VM template for Rocky Linux. It's not really different from the template for CentOS 8, but should please Rocky users.
Updated xcp-ng-release* packages bring small fixes to the XOA deploy feature on host landing web pages, and update jquery to fix an XSS vulnerability in this library.

How to update

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update ca-certificates grub grub-efi grub-tools guest-templates-json guest-templates-json-data-linux guest-templates-json-data-other guest-templates-json-data-windows kernel xcp-featured xcp-ng-release xcp-ng-release-config xcp-ng-release-presets --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing

Then reboot.

What to test

The same as usual: installation of the update, normal use, check that you find no obvious regressions... This is the most important.

And optionnally the changes described above if you're in a situation that allows it.

Test window before release

A few days.

What's not included in this update train

The XAPI update is not included yet due to a regression found during the tests: our landing web page was completely broken when loaded in HTTPS (which becomes the only way as HTTP is disabled with this update). We identified the issue and contributed a fix to the XAPI project. There's still some work to do internally before we can release it confidently.

ug1556

@jcastang

Hello are you using i40e driver for your network card?

HeMaN

@stormi
I just installed the updates and have not had any issues this far, will have an eye on the systemfor the next few days and report back if I notice something different.

PS you must add --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing to the yum update command, otherwise it will not install the new packages from the test repo

stormi

@heman Thanks, fixing!

Danp

@stormi Updated and rebooted. I'll report back if I encounter any issues.

JeffBerntsen

@stormi
Working well for me so far.

stormi

So, Citrix published a new kernel hotfix yesterday, so I synced our kernel package to it. As a result, there's a new kernel package in the testing repository, so please update again if you had updated already

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

Anyone else, just follow the instructions of the big post above, you'll get the new kernel with the other updates.

I'll update the big post with details about the new kernel update.

HeMaN

@stormi installed this new kernel as well and rebooted.
Still no regression issues found till now.

XCP-ng-JustGreat

@stormi All new patches applied fine. No apparent problems identified so far.

JeffBerntsen

@stormi So far, so good for my systems with the re-updated kernel.

stormi

A big thank you to those who tested, and last call for the others! Publish time is close.

stormi

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

A big thank you to those who tested, and last call for the others! Publish time is close.

If you are wondering "how close", I delayed them a bit to potentially group them with another update.

NielsH

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

A big thank you to those who tested, and last call for the others! Publish time is close.

If you are wondering "how close", I delayed them a bit to potentially group them with another update.

Hi @stormi

Any idea how long "a bit" is?

Cheers!
Niels

stormi

The updates I wanted to group them with did not come, so it all got delayed (and retrospectively I could have released them earlier).

Are you waiting for a specific fix?

NielsH

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

The updates I wanted to group them with did not come, so it all got delayed (and retrospectively I could have released them earlier).

Are you waiting for a specific fix?

Not specifically, but we have not yet installed the previous patches. We were planning on combining them with the upcoming patches. Since it always takes a while to update / reboot all hypervisors we wanted to avoid double work if we were to install the current available updates today and for example tomorrow new ones are released

stormi

The best I can say is: real close... probably...

stormi

The long awaiting (and awaited?) train of updates was finally published (including the XAPI update)!

https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2021/12/08/december-2021-xcp-ng-updates/

A big thanks for your feedback everyone, and get ready for the next ones!