Okay, so F-11 is done and dusted. Onwards to F-12!
Here's what the schedule looks like:
2009-07-28 Feature Freeze (53 days) 2009-08-04 Beta Freeze (60 days) 2009-09-22 Final Development Freeze (109 days) 2009-10-20 Compose & Stage Release Candidate (137 days)
F11 Release ===========
Another one week slip for the F11 release, this because of a late breaking anaconda storage problem:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-May/msg02159.html
A late discovered and just potentially fixed anaconda storage bug[1] has necessitated another week slip of our schedule. The change is important but invasive enough to require re-validating our storage tests. We were already late in producing the Release Candidate and there is not enough time to produce another one and validate it in time for next Tuesday's release date.
However, the release is now complete and being queued up on the mirrors. Expect the release early next week!
F11 Virt Interview ==================
Dan Berrange was interviewed about virtualization in Fedora 11. Read the full interview here:
http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2009/05/fedora-11-virtualization-reality.html
F11 Updates ===========
A number of zero-day updates are available for F-11 users. The following are available in stable:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qemu-0.10.5-2.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt-0.6.2-11.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/virt-manager-0.7.0-5.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libguestfs-1.0.21-3.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/openbios-1.0-1.fc11
and these are in updates-testing:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt-0.6.2-12.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/virt-viewer-0.0.3-5.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libguestfs-1.0.41-1.fc11 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/etherboot-5.4.4-14.fc11
Please help out with testing these latest updates and report any issues.
Virt Preview Repository =======================
Updates are being pushed regularily to the virt-preview repository:
http://markmc.fedorapeople.org/virt-preview/README
Below are the updates which have been pushed lately - obviously these are also available in rawhide:
== qemu ==
* Fri Jun 5 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 2:0.10.50-6.kvm86 - Fix 'kernel requires an x86-64 CPU' error - BuildRequires ncurses-devel to enable '-curses' option (#504226)
* Wed Jun 3 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 2:0.10.50-5.kvm86 - Prevent locked cdrom eject - fixes hang at end of anaconda installs (#501412) - Avoid harmless 'unhandled wrmsr' warnings (#499712)
* Thu May 21 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 2:0.10.50-4.kvm86 - Update to kvm-86 release - ChangeLog here: http://marc.info/?l=kvm&m=124282885729710
== libvirt ==
* Fri Jun 5 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 0.6.4-2.fc12 - Remove the qemu BuildRequires
* Fri May 29 2009 Daniel Veillard veillard@redhat.com - 0.6.4-1.fc12 - Upstream release of 0.6.4 - new APIs - fixes for latests QEmu/KVM versions - various assorted fixes
* Mon May 25 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 0.6.3-11.fc12 - Bring up the bridge, even if it doesn't have an IP address (bug #501912)
* Thu May 21 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 0.6.3-10.fc12 - Fix XML attribute escaping (bug #499791) - Fix serious event handling issues causing guests to be destroyed (bug #499698)
* Thu May 21 2009 Mark McLoughlin markmc@redhat.com - 0.6.3-9.fc12 - Fix qemu argv detection with latest qemu (bug #501923)
Some discussion has also begun on how to sign the packages in the preview repo:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-June/msg00024.html
Xen Dom0 ========
Jeremy Fitzhardinge's latest submission of the Xen Dom0 patches for 2.6.31 has caused the kernel community to get themselves into a bit of a flap. LWN has a nice article on the 'discussion':
http://lwn.net/Articles/335812/
But the stronger voice looks to be the one saying that the problems need to be fixed first. The deciding factors seem to be (1) the user-space ABI, and (2) the intrusion into the core x86 code; those issues make Xen different from yet another driver or filesystem. That, in turn, suggests that the Dom0 code is not destined for the mainline anytime soon. Instead, the Xen developers will be expected to go back and fix a list of problems - a lot of work with an uncertain result at the end.
Will we have Dom0 support in the F-12 kernel? It's looking increasingly unlikely, isn't it?
On a positive note, reading LKML threads like this are a good way of putting the supposed dire state of fedora-devel-list in perspective ;-)
In other news Michael Young continues to push out RPM builds of the latest Dom0 patch set:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-June/msg00023.html
Oh yes - Gerd Hoffman has pushed a xen-3.4.0 update to F-11:
Bugs ====
DOOM-O-METER: 236 open bugs 3 weeks ago, 238 now.
It looks like 103 of these are F-11/F-12 bugs which aren't fixed by pending updates.
The "short" list of particularily interesting F-11 bugs is here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F11VirtTarget&hide...
= New Bugs =
== qemu ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503236 qemu/tcg - boot hangs intermittently on cryptomgr_test at doublefault_fn
Rich Jones discovered this TCG issue with libguestfs tests. There has been some discussion upstream analyzing the issue.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503184 Add system_reboot to qemu
Currently there is no way for libvirt to request qemu to reboot a guest. We really should get this done for F12.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503156 qemu VNC :: xterm inside VM shows garbled text
Looks like our vnc server has some issues with framebuffer updates.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/504273 qemu-system-ppc on ppc host fails with "no opcode defined"
It looks like qemu-system-ppc on a ppc host is failing to initialize its opcode table.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/504294 qemu-system-ppc fails to boot ISO image
Looks like qemu's ppc target can't currently boot from a cdrom.
== libvirt ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/500968 virt-manager traceback on shutdown of qemu-kvm -no-acpi guest
A guest with ACPI disabled will exit immediately when issued with the "system_powerdown" command and libvirt isn't handling this gracefully.
== virtinst ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502627 virtinst should always specify the disk image format in guest configuration
This is a long standing known issue, which has been fixed upstream bu we should really pull the fix into F-11.
== virt-manager ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502110 virt-manager does not re-connect after libvirtd restart
It seems that if you restart libvirtd while virt-manager is running, then virt-manager doesn't know how to re-connect to libvirtd.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499547 virt-manager should restart linux guests after they have finished installing
Discussion about the fact that virt-manager does not re-start a guest after it has been installed.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502777 virt-manager does not recalculate free disk space on new VM creation
In the 'New VM' wizard, we don't currently update the 'XXXGb available on the host' message if people go and delete files when they realize they don't have enough space.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503001 RFE virt-manager: allow desktop switch with ctrl+alt+arrow_key
Someone finally filed a bug on it :-) When you go to switch workspaces with Ctrl-Alt-Arrow, virt-manager grabs the keyboard, which is pretty annoying.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503150 virt-manager window size bigger after returning from fullscreen
It seems that going back and forth between fullscreen can cause the virt-manager window to be resized such that it is partially off-screen.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503784 memory changes in virt-manager do not persist across libvirtd restart
virt-manager is using a non-persistent libvirt API to adjust the guest memory configuration.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503786 virt-manager refuses to increase guest memory until max memory change is first applied
An annoying little problem where virt-manager appears to want to pick a fight with the user.
== gnome-applet-vm ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502748 gnome-applet-vm should use PolicyKit
The applet currently uses consolehelper, it should use PolicyKit instead.
= Resolved Bugs =
== qemu ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/501412 f11 kvm guest install exits after package install completes
qemu wasn't properly implementing cdrom door locking allowing anaconda to eject the cdrom while it was locked, killing the install. Fixed in qemu-0.10.5-2.fc11.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/501264 qemu segfaults for -net socket,listen=localhost:4567
Simple fix cherry-picked from upstream and included in qemu-0.10.5-2.fc11.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499712 qemu-kvm: avoid harmless unhandled wrmsr 0xc0010117 messages
These warnings were causing quite a bit of confusion so we've cherry-picked a fix from Marcelo to make them go away. Also in qemu-0.10.5-2.fc11.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503575 LiveCD Installer hangs during guest VM install-to-virt-drive
Apparently this has been fixed by the qemu-0.10.5 update.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503807 kqemu is disabled in qemu
Glauber lays down the law, we're not supporting kqemu.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/504226 qemu-kvm binary should support the '-curses' option
A simple missing ncurses-devel BuildRequires was causing the '-curses' option to not be supported in qemu. Fixed in F-12.
== libvirt ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/502862 libvirt runs qemu-system-ppc with wrong machine type - should be g3beige, not g3bw
The ppc machine types have changed in upstream qemu; fixed in the libvirt-0.6.2-12.fc11 update.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503066 libvirtd crashes on tls connection
danpb fixed this upstream and the fix was included in libvirt-0.6.2-12.fc11.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503406 F11: libvirt: cannot shutdown virtual machines booted to a console prompt
It turns out that if acpid is not running in the guest, the qemu 'system_powerdown' command used by libvirt doesn't do anything.
== virt-viewer ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499362 virt-viewer prevents key combinations like alt-f from being sent to the guest https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499595 virt-viewer mixes up password and username credentials for VNC https://bugzilla.redhat.com/499594 virt-viewer doesn't know how to provide a username/password to libvirt connections
danpb pushed a virt-viewer-0.0.3-5.fc11 update with fixes for all these issues.
== libguestfs ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503133 "mkdir-p" should not throw errors on preexisting directories https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503135 cramfs and squashfs modules should be available in libguestfs appliances https://bugzilla.redhat.com/503169 libguestfs /dev is too sparse for kernel installation/upgrade
Rich Jones and Charles Duffy have been busily fixing libguestfs bugs.
= Ongoing Bugs =
== qemu ==
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/501935 qemu-kvm -kernel should parse "vga=" cmdline option
Someone posted an implementation for this upstream.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/501131 qemu segfault when VNC client disconnects
Enrico tried the test patch and it didn't help, but that could be down to the fact that there are many failure cases. A cleaner fix is required.
Xen Dom0
Jeremy Fitzhardinge's latest submission of the Xen Dom0 patches for 2.6.31 has caused the kernel community to get themselves into a bit of a flap. LWN has a nice article on the 'discussion':
http://lwn.net/Articles/335812/
But the stronger voice looks to be the one saying that the problems need to be fixed first. The deciding factors seem to be (1) the user-space ABI, and (2) the intrusion into the core x86 code; those issues make Xen different from yet another driver or filesystem. That, in turn, suggests that the Dom0 code is not destined for the mainline anytime soon. Instead, the Xen developers will be expected to go back and fix a list of problems - a lot of work with an uncertain result at the end.
Some more details: The controversial bits are:
(1) MTRR support. Not that a big deal, can be skipped for the initial merge. Might be PAT obsoletes this anyway ... (2) swiotlb hooks. Not *that* problematic I think. (3) lapic + ioapic. That is the big hot topic. Current code lacks sensible interfaces to the different apic types out there in the wild. The current dom0 patches hook just into that mess instead of cleaning it up. Right now it looks like Jeremy has to sort that mess to get the xen bits in, using the to-be-created apic interfaces.
So it looks like Jeremy will again end up doing x86 arch code cleanups to get the xen bits in, like it happened before. Jeremy already did alot of x86 cleanup and unification work as part of the xen domU merge.
Will we have Dom0 support in the F-12 kernel? It's looking increasingly unlikely, isn't it?
No way the apic stuff will make it into the 2.6.31 merge window opening RSN, the work on that barely started. Thus we can expect functional dom0 support upstream in 2.6.32 earliest. And even that isn't a safe bet, the apic stuff has to go quite smooth for that, on a road full of quirks for bugs-in-silicon ...
Oh yes - Gerd Hoffman has pushed a xen-3.4.0 update to F-11:
Pushed to rawhide. F-11 will follow, but most likely after the 3.4.1 bugfix release.
Also noteworthy: There is a discussion on xen-devel regarding the future of the xen linux trees. Which one should be used & maintained and so on. The options / kernel trees are:
(1) The old 2.6.18 tree. (2) The 2.6.27 tree (patches forward-ported by suse, i.e. jan beulich). (3) The 2.6.29 gentoo patches (the 2.6.27 suse patches forward-ported). (4) jeremys kernel.org tree (aka pv_ops/dom0).
Looks like Keir seriously considers switching xen-unstable to the pv_ops kernel by default. YES! FINALLY! Well, it is probably to early to uncork the champagne, but I think we can at least put a bottle into the fridge ;)
cheers, Gerd
-
Gerd Hoffmann -
Mark McLoughlin