CentOS virt - Aug 2018 - ANNOUNCE: centos-release-xen switching to 4.8 next week

Greeting,

We are about to update the centos-release-xen package to point to Xen
4.8 rather than 4.6. I'll push the update next week.

As a reminder, you can "pin" your installation to Xen 4.6 by
installing
centos-release-xen-46 and then removing centos-release-xen.

And for the more adventurous, that update will come with a new package
centos-release-xen-410 to install Xen 4.10.

(Testing will be updated today.)

Cheers,

-- 
Anthony PERARD

Hi

Thanks for providing updated Packages, they are much appreciated. At 
work, we are currently running an entire production infrastructure on 
Xen4CentOS, with quite some success.

We are looking into a refresh towards CentOS 7 along with newer Xen and 
Dom0 Kernel packages. However, even the updated packages are quite old. 
Xen 4.8 is out of active support since June and will see the end of 
security support in less than a year. Likewise, a newer LTS kernel 
(4.14) exists for quite some time, while the Xen4CentOS effort currently 
uses 4.9.

Are there any short to mid-term plans to bump both versions to more 
current ones (i.e.: 4.10 and 4.14)? Currently, our update-tests are 
based on 4.10 candidate packages with kernel 4.9. Given the support 
timelines, I'd rather prefer 4.10 over 4.8. A change in Xen versions has 
been never successfully performed using live-migration between versions, 
so a reboot of more or less our entire infrastructure is required. 
Something you would not consider light-hearted.

As a side note, is there anything reasonable, people like me could to, 
to support the speed-up of that process? I would consider testing to be 
important, but are there any regression test-suites, one could use? I am 
aware, there are such tests, but I have not found something to actually 
try in our test-infrastructure.

Finally a big shout-out and kudos to the Xen community and Xen4CentOS. 
Your work is used and much appreciated.

Regards,

Thomas


On 08/02/2018 12:32 PM, Anthony PERARD wrote:
> Greeting,
>
> We are about to update the centos-release-xen package to point to Xen
> 4.8 rather than 4.6. I'll push the update next week.
>
> As a reminder, you can "pin" your installation to Xen 4.6 by
installing
> centos-release-xen-46 and then removing centos-release-xen.
>
> And for the more adventurous, that update will come with a new package
> centos-release-xen-410 to install Xen 4.10.
>
> (Testing will be updated today.)
>
> Cheers,
>

On 08/02/2018 03:58 AM, T.Weyergraf wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Thanks for providing updated Packages, they are much appreciated. At work,
we are currently running an entire production infrastructure on Xen4CentOS,
> with quite some success.
> 
> We are looking into a refresh towards CentOS 7 along with newer Xen and
Dom0 Kernel packages. However, even the updated packages are quite old. Xen
> 4.8 is out of active support since June and will see the end of security
support in less than a year.
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Release_Features says December
2019, so about a year and 4 months.
> Likewise, a newer LTS kernel (4.14) exists for
> quite some time, while the Xen4CentOS effort currently uses 4.9.
The end support date for that is much sooner: January 2019. Based on
https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html I'm not sure if it makes sense
to
move until a new LTS is available, as I suspect that will happen before 4.9
support ends. If you wanted to contribute an experimental 4.14 kernel it
might be accepted.
> Are there any short to mid-term plans to bump both versions to more current
ones (i.e.: 4.10 and 4.14)?
Anthony's original email said "that update will come with a new package
centos-release-xen-410 to install Xen 4.10." So yes on Xen.
> As a side note, is there anything reasonable, people like me could to, to
support the speed-up of that process? I would consider testing to be
> important, but are there any regression test-suites, one could use? I am
aware, there are such tests, but I have not found something to actually try
> in our test-infrastructure.
My understanding is that would be most welcome if you have anything to
contribute. There are occasional meetings on freenode in #centos-devel for the
virt-sig but you can also try the #centos-virt irc room.
> Finally a big shout-out and kudos to the Xen community and Xen4CentOS. Your
work is used and much appreciated.
+1, we haven't given back enough ourselves.

--Sarah

I assume the 4.6 to 4.8 upgrade just works and there's nothing special 
to be done? I haven't fired up a test box yet.

Thanks,
Jeff

On 08/02/2018 04:32 AM, Anthony PERARD wrote:
> Greeting,
> 
> We are about to update the centos-release-xen package to point to Xen
> 4.8 rather than 4.6. I'll push the update next week.
> 
> As a reminder, you can "pin" your installation to Xen 4.6 by
installing
> centos-release-xen-46 and then removing centos-release-xen.
> 
> And for the more adventurous, that update will come with a new package
> centos-release-xen-410 to install Xen 4.10.
> 
> (Testing will be updated today.)
> 
> Cheers,
>

On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 11:58 AM T.Weyergraf <T.Weyergraf at virtfinity.de>
wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> Thanks for providing updated Packages, they are much appreciated. At
> work, we are currently running an entire production infrastructure on
> Xen4CentOS, with quite some success.
>
> We are looking into a refresh towards CentOS 7 along with newer Xen and
> Dom0 Kernel packages. However, even the updated packages are quite old.
> Xen 4.8 is out of active support since June and will see the end of
> security support in less than a year. Likewise, a newer LTS kernel
> (4.14) exists for quite some time, while the Xen4CentOS effort currently
> uses 4.9.
Re Xen, our ideal goal is to always be running the most
recently-released even-numbered point release; i.e., I would ideally
like to be on 4.10 now, and probably be on 4.12 as soon as 4.12.1
comes out.  But Anthony and I are normal developers with lots of stuff
to do, so we get to it when we can.  Pull requests make improvements
happen much faster. : -)

Regarding Linux, I don't personally have any preference; historically
the sense was that CentOS users liked "old stodgy and boring", and so
staying on the oldest possible kernel to pick up the latest bug fixes
*without* picking up the latest bugs was seen as the thing to do.  We
might make an exception to get PVH.  Did you have an alternate
suggestion for the community to consider?
> Are there any short to mid-term plans to bump both versions to more
> current ones (i.e.: 4.10 and 4.14)? Currently, our update-tests are
> based on 4.10 candidate packages with kernel 4.9. Given the support
> timelines, I'd rather prefer 4.10 over 4.8. A change in Xen versions
has
> been never successfully performed using live-migration between versions,
> so a reboot of more or less our entire infrastructure is required.
> Something you would not consider light-hearted.
Supporting any -> any live migration is a testing load that upstream
Xen doesn't have yet.  If that's important, you might consider one of
the paid-for options, like XenServer.
> As a side note, is there anything reasonable, people like me could to,
> to support the speed-up of that process? I would consider testing to be
> important, but are there any regression test-suites, one could use? I am
> aware, there are such tests, but I have not found something to actually
> try in our test-infrastructure.
There are three general things that need testing:
1) Xen core virtualization
  1a) Xen / CentOS package usability
2) CentOS packaging (making sure installs / updates work, &c)
3) Kernel testing -- device driver bugs, &c

#1 is generally taken care of pretty well by upstream testing at this
point, so doesn't need any coverage.

#1a of course is something that is difficult for upstream developers
to do, because we're too close things, and because we don't do
everything our users do.

#2 is something that we really should get into a CI somewhere; but
generally a combination of ad-hoc and community testing seems to work
OK.

#3 is something that it's not really possible for anyone to do other
than a company with massive amounts of dedicated resources and an HCL;
we really rely on our users to test their own hardware and report /
help track down issues.

So, probably the best thing is to help test out new kernels on your
own hardware whenever you can; and also give feedback / suggestions on
the usability of the software and packages that we can feed in to
improve the process.
> Finally a big shout-out and kudos to the Xen community and Xen4CentOS.
> Your work is used and much appreciated.
Thanks!  Glad to know it's useful. :-)

 -George