XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback 🚀
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Decided to try updating to beta 2 and... install went smooth, but system now refuses to boot.
Seems issue is similar to RC1 install. Boot fails silently, similar to install on RC1, and next boot option is executed. But while the RC1 failed into a working 8.2 install, 8.3 boot fails into EFI shell.
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I've tried to do a "clean" beta 2 install, same issue (efi shell).
I've changed bios to legacy boot and was able to run a RC1 installer (nice bootup graphic and all), but it warns you that such method will not be supported:
So I ended up using said installer to recover 8.2 install from backup and I'm back up and running at 8.2 (via EFI). Not sure what part of my config could cause issues with 8.3.
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@stormi The CentOS Base yum repo need to be changed to the baseurl vault as the mirrorlist no longer works...
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@Andrew said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:@stormi The CentOS Base yum repo need to be changed to the baseurl vault as the mirrorlist no longer works...
Oh yeah, i wanted to give that info to.
Is there any plan/information on a distro upgrade / distro rebase?
There is from plesk a centos2alma 8 script on the internet, if there is some ressource needed.
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We are aware of that, we discussed the best approach recently.
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Is XOSTOR supported on 8.3 rc1?
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No yet, we prioritize 8.2 so far. But it will come, don't worry
It's mostly packaging work and some subtle difference, but it's not that big. Just a matter of what to do first 
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@olivierlambert
Thanks for the info. No hurry. Better to do it right than fast. -
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Ok, update on the update issues:
I could not migrate VMs from the older backup server which was upgraded to 8.3 RC1 back to 8.2 install, so I'm forced with having to continue troubleshooting it.
Today I tried to start a CD install from efi shell and I finally got an error / output as to why install fails silently:"This build of Xen requires NX support"
I guess I had it disabled in the BIOS, just wish the install would have output the error with a wait prompt or something, rather than a silent failure.
Edit: Confirmed; after enabling execution disable option within bios, installer booted without issues and the install is currently ongoing.
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Ah thanks, great feedback
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@olivierlambert Thank you. Install went smoothly and I'm in the process of transferring all of the VMs from the backup server back onto my main workhorse.
I just wish I remembered an old troubleshooting tip:
When something odd is going on, reset the bios to defaults (or something along those lines).I did figure out a way to run the installer from efi shell; never done that before. Wish I thought of it sooner as well (no telling how many times I've rebooted this system trying to troubleshoot things.
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@eb-xcp said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:Edit: Confirmed; after enabling execution disable option within bios, installer booted without issues and the install is currently ongoing.
That is a bug. Xen is supposed to be able to detect this case and re-activate NX on it's own.
For the EFI path in your screenshot, that one doesn't have logic to re-activate. IIRC, we weren't sure whether it was needed, because surely an EFI system wasn't still using Pentium4 compatibility. Clearly some wrong reasoning, and it's fairly easy to adjust.
However, fixing that path wont fix the normal MB2 path, which does have logic to reactivate and should have been able to cope fine.
What system do you have?
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@andyhhp thanks, seems issue was most visible within RC1 install. 8.2 worked well with NX disabled (I guess by activating it on it's own), beta 2 would install, but not boot (have not tried beta 1), and RC1 would fail seemingly silently.
The efi path is not to activate the NX setting, it was just me getting to the cd directory with the bootx64.efi launcher for the installer. Running it this way, rather than allowing BIOS to boot into CD directly is what allowed me to see the output of the installer prior to exit: "This build of Xen requires NX support". Normally the next boot option would take over and this text would not be seen.
My setup is Supermicro X10SRM-TF motherboard with E5-2699 V4 processor, latest bios, UEFI boot.
I don't even remember when I disabled NX support, perhaps couple of years ago when playing around with increasing single core performance. -
@eb-xcp said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:beta 2 would install, but not boot
Did you use the network to install the packages? I would expect that when getting them from the ISO you should have the same behavior on first boot than when booting the ISO (but obviously, once the packages get upgrade later, that would bring the problem too)
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@yann Never got that far, 8.3 beta 2 would not boot after the install.
Difference with RC1 is that the beta 2 installer itself did not check, or could re-enable NX support, but the actual boot of beta 2 would fail similar to RC1 installer (likely due to NX support being disabled).
So I could install, but not boot, the beta 2 onto the system. My previous posts don't provide much detail, but here is how it went: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/80208 -
Forgot to mention that I did try installing RC1 via legacy bios onto the system (installer would work in that case), but I could not get the system to recognize boot disk (NVME) after the install (installer itself saw and could use said disk).
Ended up discovering issue with EFI installer prior to fixing the legacy path as I've not spent much time on that since legacy bios would not be supported down the road. -
@eb-xcp said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:@yann Never got that far, 8.3 beta 2 would not boot after the install.
Roger that, but when installing beta2, did you select "local" or "http" as package source?
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@yann Good catch. I tend to use net install when available, as it is faster than emulated iso on supermicro motherboards. When trying beta 2 install, I did use the network source by using xcp-ng-8.3.0-beta2-netinstall.iso.
To test things further, I used my backup server (Supermicro X10DRT-H, with E5-2630 V3) and disabled execute disable bit. Verified that 8.3 RC1 install gives the same error "Xen requires NX support" and ran beta 2 install from local media. This time 8.3 beta 2 was installed without issues and after a reboot I verified that execute was still disabled in the bios.
When using RC1 installer:
Beta 2 installer with local media this time:
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@stormi said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:@NoHeadroom said in XCP-ng 8.3 betas and RCs feedback
:Anyway, it's better to have an option b) if option a) fails
As you wish, but I won't support option b) in any case, so I prefer to mention it
Yesterday I upgraded my 8.2 server by downloading the 8.3 rc1 iso file onto a USB stick. In general, virtual machines, iscsi storage, etc. everything worked without problems, but there is an interesting situation. Before the upgrade, the server was connecting to the internet without problems. For example, when I ping Google, I get a response, but now when I ping, it finds the IP address from DNS, but there is no response. I checked the gateway and DNS settings many times and did not see any problem. In this case, I could not install XOA either. Has anyone experienced such a problem?
