Xen 4.6 RC3 test instructions

If you come to this page before or after the Test Day is completed, your testing is still valuable, and you can use the information on this page to test, post any bugs and test reports to xen-devel@. If this page is more than two weeks old when you arrive here, please check the current schedule and see if a similar but more recent Test Day is planned or has already happened.

What needs to be tested

General things:

• Making sure that Xen 4.6 compiles and installs properly on different software configurations; particularly on distros
• Making sure that Xen 4.6, along with appropriately up-to-date kernels, work on different hardware.
• If you use ARM Hardware, which is not widely available and not rackable (and thus not part of our automated test suite), please check out Xen ARM Manual Smoke Test.

For more ideas about what to test, please see Testing Xen.

Installing

Getting RC3

• xen: with a recent enough git (>= 1.7.8.2) just pull from the proper tag (4.6.0-rc3) from the main repo directly:

git clone -b 4.6.0-rc3 git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git

With an older git version (and/or if that does not work, e.g., complaining with a message like this: Remote branch 4.6.0-rc3 not found in upstream origin, using HEAD instead), do the following:

git clone git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git ; cd xen ; git checkout 4.6.0-rc3

• tarball: http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/4.6.0-rc3/xen-4.6.0-rc3.tar.gz http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/4.6.0-rc3/xen-4.6.0-rc3.tar.gz.sig

Building

Instructions are available for building Xen on Linux, NetBSD, and FreeBSD

Known issues

See http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2015-09/msg01106.html

Test instructions

General

• Remove any old versions of Xen toolstack and userspace binaries (including qemu).
• Remove any udev files under /etc because Xen 4.6 doesn't use those anymore.
• Download and install the most recent Xen 4.6 RC, as described above. Make sure to check the README and INSTALL for changes in required development libraries and procedures. Some particular things to note:

Once you have Xen 4.6 RC installed check that you can install a guest etc and use it in the ways which you normally would, i.e. that your existing guest configurations, scripts etc still work.

Specific RC3 things

None at this time.

Specific ARM Test Instructions

Follow Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions

Specific x86 Test Instructions

vNUMA for HVM

Xen 4.6 supports configuring virtual NUMA topology for HVM guests. It's not required for the host to have NUMA capability to use vNUMA. See xl manual for configuration syntax.

Save / restore and migrate guest with vNUMA configured will lead to unstable performance.

Migration v2

Migration v2 is supposed to work transparently to end users. There are two things that worth testing:

• Migrate from 4.6 to 4.6
• Migrate from 4.5 to 4.6

Just use xl migrate command to test migration.

Migrating Linux 3.19+ 32bit PV kernel was broken, it's now fixed.

Reporting Bugs (& Issues)

• Use Freenode IRC channel #xentest to discuss questions interactively
• Report any bugs / missing functionality / unexpected results.
• Please put [TestDay] into the subject line
• Also make sure you specify the RC number you are using
• Make sure to follow the guidelines on Reporting Bugs against Xen.

Reporting success

We would love it if you could report successes by e-mailing xen-devel@lists.xen.org, preferably including:

• Hardware: Please at least include the processor manufacturer (Intel/AMD). Other helpful information might include specific processor models, amount of memory, number of cores, and so on
• Software: If you're using a distro, the distro name and version would be the most helpful. Other helpful information might include the kernel that you're running, or other virtualization-related software you're using (e.g., libvirt, xen-tools, drbd, &c).
• Guest operating systems: If running a Linux version, please specify whether you ran it in PV or HVM mode.
• Functionality tested: High-level would include toolstacks, and major functionality (e.g., suspend/resume, migration, pass-through, stubdomains, &c)

The following template might be helpful: should you use Xen 4.6.0-RC3 for testing, please make sure you state that information!

Subject: [TESTDAY] Test report
 
* Hardware:
 
* Software:

* Guest operating systems:

* Functionality tested:

* Comments:

For example:

Subject: [TESTDAY] Test report
 
* Hardware: 
Dell 390's (Intel, dual-core) x15
HP (AMD, quad-core) x5
 
* Software: 
Ubuntu 10.10,11.10
Fedora 17

* Guest operating systems:
Windows 8
Ubuntu 12.10,11.10 (HVM)
Fedora 17 (PV)

* Functionality tested:
xl
suspend/resume
pygrub

* Comments:
Window 8 booting seemed a little slower than normal.

Other than that, great work!