Xen 4.4 development update: RC4 end of this week

Xen 4.4 development update: RC4 end of this week

[George Dunlap]

This information will be mirrored on the Xen 4.4 Roadmap wiki page:
 http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Roadmap/4.4

Well since rc3, we've had a number of fairly major bugs reported, the
fixes for which are unfortunately a bit on the risky side.  I've
listed the ones accepted under "Major patches since RC3".
Additionally, there are a number of open issues which may involve
slightly risky changes (the w2k3 RTC loop bug, the PVH regression,
dirty vram / IOMMU, &c).

We've got a test day planned for 18 February, so we'll probably cut
RC4 at the end of this week (14 Feb).  We definitely shouldn't rush,
but from a priority perspective, anything to make it into RC4 will
have to be in the tree by the morning of 13 Feb at the latest so that
it can pass the push gate.  (But of course, if there are any test
failures it will mean missing the RC.)

If all the fixes are in, and the testing of RC4 goes well, then we
could conceivably branch on the 24th and start the wheels of the
marketing machine in motion for an announcement the following week.

But those are two very big ifs, so don't book the table for the
celebration party just yet. :-)

= Timeline =

Here is our current timeline based on a 6-month release:

* Feature freeze: 18 October 2013
* Code freezing point: 18 November 2013
* First RCs: 6 December 2013  <== WE ARE HERE
* Release: When it's ready (Probably by the end of February).

Last updated: 10 February 2014

== Completed ==

* Event channel scalability (FIFO event channels)

* Non-udev scripts for driver domains (non-Linux driver domains)

* Multi-vector PCI MSI (Hypervisor side)

* Improved Spice support on libxl
 - Added Spice vdagent support
 - Added Spice clipboard sharing support
 - Spice usbredirection support for upstream qemu

* PHV domU (experimental only)

* pvgrub2 checked into grub upstream

* ARM64 guest

* Guest EFI booting (tianocore)

* kexec

* Testing: Xen on ARM

* Update to SeaBIOS 1.7.3.1

* Update to qemu 1.6.2

* SWIOTLB (in Linux 3.13)

* Disk: indirect descriptors (in 3.11)

* Reworked ocaml bindings

== Resolved since last update ==

* qemu-* parses "008" as octal in USB bus.addr format

* Claim mode and PoD

* Disable IOMMU if no southbridge

* osstest windows-install failures

* libxl / libvirt races

== Major patches since RC3 ==

* qemu-xen DMA corruption issue
  > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/29

* FP save/restore support for ARM guests

* libxl async patch series

* AMD IOMMU: fail if there is no southbridge IO-APIC

== Open ==

* Win2k3 SP2 RTC infinite loops
   > Regression introduced late in Xen-4.3 development
   owner: andrew.cooper@citrix
   status: patches posted, undergoing review.

* PVH regression

* dirty vram / IOMMU bug
 > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/38
 status: Patch posted

* RHEL 7 pygrub patches
 > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/39
 status: Wait for 4.4.1?

* credit2 runqueues
 > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/36

* RHEL 5.x ocaml build bug
  status: patch posted

* libxl / xl does not handle failure of remote qemu gracefully
  > Related to http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/30
  > Easiest way to reproduce:
  >  - set "vncunused=0" and do a local migrate
  >  - The "remote" qemu will fail because the vnc port is in use
  > The failure isn't the problem, but everything being stuck afterwards is
 Ian J investigating

* qemu memory leak?
  > http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-03/msg00276.html

Re: Xen 4.4 development update: RC4 end of this week

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

> == Open ==
> 
..
 
> * PVH regression

Patch posted, just needs an Ack from the Intel folks (which
I think they did give: "Both of fixings are right to me.")

So if Jan is OK with it (and since he suggested the fix I think
he would be), then the fix should go in.

Jan, do you want me to repost it with the right 'Acked' by
tags?

> 

Re: Xen 4.4 development update: RC4 end of this week

[Jan Beulich]

>>> On 10.02.14 at 19:31, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com> wrote:
>>  == Open ==
>> 
> ..
>  
>> * PVH regression
> 
> Patch posted, just needs an Ack from the Intel folks (which
> I think they did give: "Both of fixings are right to me.")
> 
> So if Jan is OK with it (and since he suggested the fix I think
> he would be), then the fix should go in.
> 
> Jan, do you want me to repost it with the right 'Acked' by
> tags?

No need to, unless you have the hope of catching the Intel folks'
attention by doing so (rather unlikely imo).

Jan

Re: Xen 4.4 development update: RC4 end of this week

[Zhang, Yang Z]

George Dunlap wrote on 2014-02-11:
> == Open ==
> 
> * Win2k3 SP2 RTC infinite loops
>> Regression introduced late in Xen-4.3 development
>    owner: andrew.cooper@citrix
>    status: patches posted, undergoing review.
> * PVH regression
> 
> * dirty vram / IOMMU bug
>> http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/38
>> status: Patch posted

Though I have patch to fix it, still need more discussions. Hope we can fix it before Xen 4.4 release.

Best regards,
Yang