Hey all,
We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input from the community about which version to move up to.
4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade.
The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU or PVH dom0 support.
I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions?
-George
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 9:42 AM George Dunlap dunlapg@umich.edu wrote:
Hey all,
We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input from the community about which version to move up to.
4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade.
The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU or PVH dom0 support.
I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions?
-George
You may also want to consider each version's EOL:
4.9 Jan, 2023 4.14 Jan, 2020 4.19 Dec, 2020
Akemi
On 3/7/19 10:30 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 9:42 AM George Dunlap dunlapg@umich.edu wrote:
Hey all,
We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input from the community about which version to move up to.
4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade.
The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU or PVH dom0 support.
I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions?
-George
You may also want to consider each version's EOL:
4.9 Jan, 2023 4.14 Jan, 2020 4.19 Dec, 2020
Regardless of EOL date, I think it's worth trying to upgrade when Xen has stable PVH dom0 support.
I am pretty sure historically that there have been difficulties backporting some of the side channel mitigations as they can be quite invasive. That may be another reason to upgrade sooner rather than later.
--Sarah
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 1:42 PM Sarah Newman srn@prgmr.com wrote:
On 3/7/19 10:30 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote:
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 9:42 AM George Dunlap dunlapg@umich.edu wrote:
Hey all,
We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input from the community about which version to move up to.
4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade.
The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU or PVH dom0 support.
I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions?
-George
You may also want to consider each version's EOL:
4.9 Jan, 2023 4.14 Jan, 2020 4.19 Dec, 2020
Regardless of EOL date, I think it's worth trying to upgrade when Xen has stable PVH dom0 support.
I am pretty sure historically that there have been difficulties backporting some of the side channel mitigations as they can be quite invasive. That may be another reason to upgrade sooner rather than later.
--Sarah
+1 for 4.19. However, this version requires a recent GCC version so it wont build at least for el6 on the CBS. We would have to build them with recent GCC from devtoolset like I do in my pull request (gcc 7.3.1).
Karl
On 3/7/19 12:55 PM, Karl Johnson wrote:
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 1:42 PM Sarah Newman <srn@prgmr.com mailto:srn@prgmr.com> wrote:
On 3/7/19 10:30 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote: > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 9:42 AM George Dunlap <dunlapg@umich.edu <mailto:dunlapg@umich.edu>> wrote: >> >> Hey all, >> >> We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I >> think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input >> from the community about which version to move up to. >> >> 4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU >> support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final >> form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH >> dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade. >> >> The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as >> it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU >> or PVH dom0 support. >> >> I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions? >> >> -George > > You may also want to consider each version's EOL: > > 4.9 Jan, 2023 > 4.14 Jan, 2020 > 4.19 Dec, 2020 Regardless of EOL date, I think it's worth trying to upgrade when Xen has stable PVH dom0 support. I am pretty sure historically that there have been difficulties backporting some of the side channel mitigations as they can be quite invasive. That may be another reason to upgrade sooner rather than later. --Sarah+1 for 4.19. However, this version requires a recent GCC version so it wont build at least for el6 on the CBS. We would have to build them with recent GCC from devtoolset like I do in my pull request (gcc 7.3.1).
Karl
I am +1 for 4.19 as well and I agree with Sarah's reasoning that we'll want stable PVH dom0 support as soon as it's reasonable. However, I had serious stability issues with 3.18 in the past and I would want keep a major kernel bump in the testing repo for 3-6 months before moving it to release. I will do as much testing as I can during that time to establish stability on my side.
It might make sense that we just bump to 4.19 for EL7 to avoid the complications related to devtoolset on EL6. 4.9 lasts the entire remaining lifetime of EL6, but will come up slightly short of EL7's. However that means bumping two divergent kernels periodically for each set of repos.
Based on recent history (4.4, 4.9) we can probably expect both 4.14 and 4.19 to become 6 year kernels extending to Jan 2024 and Dec 2024 respectively, though GKH seems to like to wait until close to the original EOL to announce these decisions. We can likely also expect a kernel like 5.3 to end up becoming longterm around end of 2019.
Hi,
On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 05:42:13PM +0000, George Dunlap wrote:
Hey all,
We've been on 4.9 for some time now, and while it's still supported, I think it's time to start thinking about upgrading, and I'd like input from the community about which version to move up to.
First let's get the current 4.9.16x PR merged and kernel update pushed out. It should fix the tty/ldisc problem causing crashes in dom0.
4.19 has been out for almost 5 months now. It will include PVH domU support, and PVH dom0 support in what _is believed_ to be the final form; so when the Virt SIG moves to a version of Xen that supports PVH dom0, the kernel will already be in place with no need to upgrade.
The other option would be to move to 4.14: Probably more stable (as it's been out for over a year now), but doesn't have either PVH domU or PVH dom0 support.
I'd suggest 4.19. Any other opinions?
+1 for 4.19 kernel as the next version.
How about blktap2 driver? In our current 4.9 kernel we have the blktap2 patch included. I think Johnny originally ported the earlier 3.18 kernel blktap2 patch to 4.9.
-George
Thanks,
-- Pasi
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Akemi Yagi -
George Dunlap -
Karl Johnson -
Kevin Stange -
Pasi Kärkkäinen -
Sarah Newman