[fedora-virt] Fedora virt status July 2012

[Cole Robinson]

Hey all, here are some Fedora virt status bits for July.

  Fedora 18
  =========

We've started passing interesting dates for Fedora 18:

  July   27: Feature submission deadline
  August 07: Feature freeze (majority of the feature is in fedora)
  August 14: Alpha change deadline
  Septem 19: Beta change deadline
  October 2: Beta Release
  October 4: Virtualization Test Day

In time for the Feature freeze next week, we will be taking a snapshot of QEMU
upstream, and will eventually move to QEMU 1.2 when it is released later in
the month.

As the feature submission deadline has passed, here is the final virt feature
list:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Syscall_Filters
  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Virt_Live_Snapshots
  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Virt_Guest_Suspend_Hibernate

In the last status report, I mentioned two potential features that eventually
didn't make the cut: virt cpu/mem hotplug won't be fully ready for F18, and
virt storage motion will not have an easy way for end users to leverage in
time for F18.

And to clarify, there will be many more virt features that are available in
F18 than the ones documented here. These are just the bits that are going
through the fedora feature process, which in a nutshell is about increased
user/developer/press exposure:

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy


  Reviving QEMU PPC, Sparc
  ========================

The openbios package has been retired in Fedora for over a year now, since it
was thought there was no way to build the package without PPC and Sparc
machines in koji. So since last March we haven't been distributing
qemu-system-ppc* or qemu-system-sparc* binaries, which depend on openbios.

However, QEMU releases distribute prebuilt versions of openbios and several
other roms that we don't have packaged for Fedora. I asked the fedora
packaging list if it might be possible to get a packaging exception to
distribute those prebuilt binaries:

  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2012-July/008557.html

Dan Horak pointed out that we actually have workable cross compilers packaged
in Fedora, which might be sufficient. In impressive fashion, Rich Jones picked
up the ball and submitted package reviews for openbios and SLOF, which were
quickly reviewed by Michael Scherer:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844748
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844737

There are still several other roms that will need to be packaged, and for it
all to be integrated with the qemu package, but this is a large chunk of the
work. Kudos to Rich, Michael, and everyone that chimed in on the packaging list!


  QEMU stable updates
  ===================

There were several QEMU updates pushed recently, based off upstream
maintenance branches.

Rawhide got QEMU 1.1.1 which was released July 16th:

  http://marc.info/?l=kvm&m=134243605927652&w=2

F17 is now finally based off the qemu-kvm 1.0.1 release. While we had been
carrying many of the 1.0.1 patches since January, the actual 1.0.1 release
from March contained several more bugfixes:

  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qemu-1.0.1-1.fc17

F16 pulled the latest patches from the QEMU 0.15 stable branch (every patch
since 0.15.1 was tagged):

  http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu-stable-0.15.git;a=shortlog
  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qemu-0.15.1-7.fc16


  virtio-win drivers updated
  ==========================

There's a new ISO containing the last virtio drivers for Windows guests:

  http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/

Let the list know if you hit any issues with them!


  Bug stats
  =========

Bug count on Jul 10 2012: 184
Bug count on Aug 02 2012: 208

Decent increase, but many of these will be closed when the
virt-manager and qemu updates are pushed to stable. We've also got 9
sitting in POST waiting for an update, mostly libvirt.

By release:
    * Fedora 16          : 81
    * Fedora 17          : 96
    * Fedora rawhide     : 31

By package:
    * gnome-boxes        : 9
    * gtk-vnc            : 3
    * ipxe               : 1
    * libguestfs         : 6
    * libosinfo          : 1
    * libvirt            : 44
    * libvirt-cim        : 3
    * libvirt-sandbox    : 3
    * netcf              : 4
    * python-virtinst    : 4
    * qemu               : 65
    * spice-gtk          : 5
    * spice-vdagent      : 1
    * usbredir           : 1
    * virt-dmesg         : 1
    * virt-manager       : 18
    * virt-v2v           : 3
    * virt-viewer        : 6
    * virt-what          : 2
    * xen                : 15
    * xorg-x11-drv-cirrus: 2
    * xorg-x11-drv-qxl   : 11


  Bugs of note
  ============

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=714271

libvirt pinned to single CPU after suspend/resume cycle ->
all VMs running on the same single core

Fixed builds are in updates-testing, so should be hitting stable soon!

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=840444

QEMU wasn't correctly offering KVM support. This regressed with the 1.1
rawhide update, but Rich Jones and Dan Berrange combined to get this fixed
right quick! rawhide and virt-preview should have fixed packages now.

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=840240

virt-manager w/ vnc can get into a bad state where virt-manager is no longer
visible but still taking keystrokes, meaning you can't interact with other
windows.

Regression caused by 0.9.2, fixed with current update in updates-testing.


Thanks,
Cole