Updates announcements and testing

stormi

New security updates (xen, Intel microcode)

Impact: host crash by exploiting PCI passthrough from a VM

Citrix' security bulletin: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX390511

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up to date host:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update xen-dom0-libs xen-dom0-tools xen-hypervisor xen-libs xen-tools --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

Versions:

xen-*: 4.13.4-9.21.1.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.

Test window before official release of the updates

~2 days.

olivierlambert

Tested here on one home lab machine, it works

Andrew

@stormi Post update, things are working as normal on my hosts.

HeMaN

updated and all fine

JeffBerntsen

@stormi Seems to be working well for me too.

stormi

Thanks for your tests. Xen developers have found an issue in the patches so I will provide a new test package when ready. The issue is rather specific so I doubt your hosts will be affected, but if you prefer to revert you can with: yum downgrade "xen-*".

stormi

So, new packages are now available for this security update, which now have fixes for the regressions the previous fixes caused.

Note that you were really unlikely to be directly affected by those regressions. They have been detected by code analysis tools, but all other CI tests did already pass with the previous update (Xen's CI, Citrix' CI, XCP-ng's CI).

Install the update with:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update xen-dom0-libs xen-dom0-tools xen-hypervisor xen-libs xen-tools --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

Version for xen-*: 4.13.4-9.21.1.xcpng8.2

If I could get feedback on it within 24h, this would be wonderful.

olivierlambert

Tested and OK here

Andrew

@stormi Updates ran fine. Systems seem to be working.

theAeon

just joining the crowd of "seems fine"

stormi

Thank you everyone.

The update is published: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2022/04/11/april-2022-security-update/

gduperrey

New updates (xen, Intel & AMD microcode)

Update the Intel microcode for the "IPU 2022.1" vulnerability (and other vulnerabilities and bugs)
- "A potential security vulnerability in some Intel Processors may allow information disclosure. Intel is releasing firmware updates to mitigate this potential vulnerability."
- See https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00617.html
Update AMD microcode for Fam17h and Fam19h
Citrix also released an update for Xen. As we had already anticipated the patches they added (that fixed regressions introduced by the fixes to the XSA-400 vulnerabilities), it does not change anything for XCP-ng. We synced our RPM with theirs anyway to make future updates easier.

Citrix' hotfix: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX459703

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up to date host:

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update microcode_ctl linux-firmware "xen-*" --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

Versions:

xen-*: 4.13.4-9.22.1.xcpng8.2
microcode_ctl: 2:2.1-26.xs21.xcpng8.2
linux-firmware: 20190314-4.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

~3 days.

Andrew

@gduperrey It's working for me, but my CPUs are not covered by the update. Normal operations seem normal.

ravenet

@gduperrey Seems fine here as well under basic usage.

theAeon

@gduperrey Skylake-S Xeon here w/o patched bios, works fine so far.

edit: double checked /proc/cpuinfo, seems the ucode update is applying correctly, so, yeah, it worked.

olivierlambert

Tested on my EPYC test bench (so not really relevant), but at least nothing broke

gskger

@gduperrey Updated my two host playlab (Dell Optiplex 9010, Intel i5-3550 CPU). Everything works as expected, but I doubt my CPUs are relevant for the update either.

I have a strange INTERNAL_ERROR((Failure "Expected string, got 'N'")) error with Xen Orchestra (from 3rd party script update to commit a1bcd) when creating a new Debian 11 VM as part of my test procedure, but I could continue with XCP-ng Center. Just found and will follow xoce INTERNAL_ERROR while trying to create VM.

olivierlambert

Yes, it's likely unrelated Thanks for the report @gskger !

gduperrey

Update released. Thanks everyone for testing!

https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2022/05/16/may-2022-security-update/

stormi

New update candidate: uefistored

As microsoft.com recently blocked the user agent our secureboot-certs script uses to download UEFI Secure Boot certificates from them, we took the following actions:

Documented how to download and install the certificates manually: https://xcp-ng.org/docs/guides.html#install-the-default-uefi-certificates-manually
Changed the user agent in secureboot-certs to make the automated download and installation possible again.
Added a new --user-agent parameter to secureboot-certs install to let you override the default easily in case of future need.
Improved the error message in case of download failure to 1. let users know about the --user-agent parameter and 2. provide the link towards the manual installation instructions.

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

From an up to date host:

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

No toolstack restart or reboot needed.

Versions:

uefistored: 1.1.5-1.xcpng8.2.x86_64

What to test

UEFI VMs. Secure Boot. Installation of certificates using secureboot-certs install: manual install, automated install with default user agent, automated install with --user-agent parameter.

Test window before official release of the updates

~ 1 week. Maybe more if it allows to synchronise with other updates not too far in the future.