XCP-ng 8.2 updates announcements and testing

ug1556

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!

NielsH

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

The long awaiting 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!

Cheers!

We don't see them yet, but I assume it may take a few hours for the mirrors to update?

[13:59 xen32 ~]# yum  update
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Excluding mirror: updates.xcp-ng.org
 * xcp-ng-base: mirrors.xcp-ng.org
Excluding mirror: updates.xcp-ng.org
 * xcp-ng-updates: mirrors.xcp-ng.org
No packages marked for update

stormi

In theory, mirrorbits should always redirect you to a mirror that has the latest files you are requesting. However there's also a local cache for yum metadata. Try to clean it: yum clean all.

NielsH

@stormi said in Updates announcements and testing:

I theory, mirrorbits should always redirect you to a mirror that has the latest files you are requesting. However there's also a local cache for yum metadata. Try to clean it: yum clean all.

Ah yes, after that I see 22 packages. Just googling for this but appears to be based on the metadata_expire option in /etc/yum.conf. The man page says the default is 6 hours, but that config file has a commented out 90m. Either way, I'll wait a few hours/until tomorrow and then it should show all packages to update in XOA on all servers

stormi

New security updates (xen, kernel)

Citrix security bulletin: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX335432

Impact: privileged code in a guest VM may crash a host or make it unresponsive.

Note: although PV guests are unsupported since XCP-ng 8.1, this very update actually breaks PV 32 bit compatibility (on purpose, for a performance gain on dom0).

However, you really should not have any remaining PV guest at this stage (especially 32 bit), for security reasons. There are unfixed vulnerabilities, and they won't be fixed.

🦺 Our support will be ready to help migrate to HVM (better), or other solutions.

Test on XCP-ng 8.2

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

Versions:

xen-*: 4.13.4-9.18.1.xcpng8.2
kernel: 4.19.19-7.0.14.1.xcpng8.2
linux-firmware: linux-firmware-20190314-2.xcpng8.2

What to test

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

Test window before official release of the updates

~2 days. I plan to release the updates on Monday morning, CET.