Xen 4.4 RC4 test instructions

What needs to be tested

General things:

• Making sure that Xen 4.4 compiles and installs properly on different software configurations; particularly on distros
• Making sure that Xen 4.4, along with appropriately up-to-date kernels, work on different hardware.

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

Installing

Getting RC4

• xen: with a recent enough git (>= 1.7.8.2) just pull from the proper tag (4.4.0-rc4) from the main repo directly:

git clone -b 4.4.0-rc4 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 4.4.0-rc4 not found in upstream origin, using HEAD instead), do the following:

git clone git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git ; cd xen ; git checkout 4.4.0-rc4

• tarball: here it is a 4.4.0 RC4 tarball (and its signature)
• RPM Packages: there is a temporary build of 4.4.0-RC4 RPMs for Fedora 20 (thanks to Michael Young) here: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=6540303

Building

Instructions are available for building Xen on Linux and NetBSD.

Test instructions

General

• Remove any old versions of Xen toolstack and userspace binaries (including qemu).
• Download and install the most recent Xen 4.4 RC, as described above. Make sure to check the README for changes in required development libraries and procedures. Some particular things to note:
  • In Xen 4.4 the default installation path has changed from /usr to /usr/local. Take extra care when removing any old versions to allow for this.

Once you have Xen 4.4 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.

In particular if you are still using the (deprecated) xm/XEND toolstack please do try your normal use cases with the XL toolstack. The XL page has some information on the differences between XEND and XL. As do the instructions from the Xen 4.2 test day.

Specific RC4 things

None at this time.

Specific Test Instructions

FreeBSD PVH

Instruction about how to setup a FreeBSD PVH DomU support can be found at FreeBSD PVH wiki page.

Linux PVH

Instruction about how to setup a Linux PVH DomU support can be found at Linux PVH wiki page.

Kexec

Kexec in Xen requires kexec-tools 2.0.5 or later.

FIFO event channel ABI

The FIFO event channel ABI (for more than 100,000 event channels) is only supported in Linux 3.14-rc3 or later. It may be disabled with the xen.fifo_events=0 Linux kernel command line option.

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 4.4.0-RC4 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!