Xen 4.7 RC test instructions
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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 4.7 compiles and installs properly on different software configurations; particularly on distros
- Making sure that Xen 4.7, along with appropriately up-to-date kernels, work on different hardware.
For more ideas about what to test, please see Testing Xen.
ARM Smoke Testing
If you use ARM Hardware, which is not widely available or not rackable (and thus not part of our automated test suite), please check out Xen ARM Manual Smoke Test. Helping out to manually test ARM boards (which will only take a few minutes) will guarantee that Xen 4.7 will work on the board that you use. If you want to see which boards need testing, check Xen ARM Manual Smoke Test/Results.
Installing
Getting a RC
For the expressions/examples below, set the following bash/sh/... variable to the release candidate number (e.g. one of rc1, rc2, ... )
RC="<release candidate number>"
From xen.git
With a recent enough git (>= 1.7.8.2), just pull from the proper tag (4.7.0-$RC) from the main repo directly:
git clone -b 4.7.0-$RC 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 4.7.0-$RC not found in upstream origin, using HEAD instead), do the following:
git clone git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git ; cd xen ; git checkout 4.7.0-$RC
From tarball
Download:
http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/4.7.0-$RC/xen-4.7.0-$RC.tar.gz http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/4.7.0-$RC/xen-4.7.0-$RC.tar.gz.sig
Building
Instructions are available for building Xen on Linux, NetBSD, and FreeBSD
Known issues
RC1
- XSM denials with 4.7.0 RC1
- Regression in Xen 4.7-rc1 - can't boot HVM guests with more than 64 vCPUS (this is caused by a bug in the Linux kernel, not a bug in Xen)
Test instructions
General
- Remove any old versions of Xen toolstack and userspace binaries (including
qemu). - Remove any udev files under /etc because Xen 4.7 doesn't use those anymore.
- Download and install the most recent Xen 4.7 RC, as described above. Make sure to check the
READMEandINSTALLfor changes in required development libraries and procedures. Some particular things to note:
Once you have Xen 4.7 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.
USB Support for xl
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To Do:
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xl introduces PVUSB support as well as the following commands:
usbctrl-attach
usbctrl-detach
usbdev-attach
usbdev-detach
usb-list
which corresponds to
usbctrl=[ "USBCTRL_SPEC_STRING", "USBCTRL_SPEC_STRING", ... ]
usbdev=[ "USB_SPEC_STRING", "USB_SPEC_STRING", ... ]
as outlined in the xl.cfg(5) man page.
RTDS scheduler improvements
The RTDS scheduler was improved in the following way
- The RTDS scheduler has been changed from a quantum-driven model to an event-driven model, which will not invoke the scheduler unnecessarily: if you use this scheduler, you may want to test your workload using the RC and check whether there are any unexpected side effects
- Support to get/set per-VCPU parameters have been added to the RTDS toolstack: see search for sched-rtds
- The
-v VCPUID/all, --vcpuid=VCPUID/alloptions have been added
- The
-f option for xl vcpu-pin
In order to be able to undo a vcpu pin override in case of a kernel driver error add a flag "-f" to the "xl vcpu-pin" command forcing the hypervisor to undo the override.
Also see xl(1) search for vcpu-pin
Hotplug disk backends (drbd, iscsi, etc.) for HVM guests
If you use drbd, iscsi or other non-default disk backends, try them with HVM guests.
Also see
Specific ARM Test Instructions
Follow Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions and Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions#Testing
Boards and hardware we do not test in our CI Loop
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To Do:
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Although we do have automated Test Infrastructure for the project, we only include rackable hardware into our CI Loop. We do have a mixture of Allwinner and Exynos processors in a custom chassis. If you have one of the following boards and want to ensure it runs on Xen 4.7, please make sure you run the Xen ARM Manual Smoke Test on an RC.
Boards not tested by our CI Loop: Allwinner boards with the exception of (TODO: add), DRA7[J6] EVM, Exynos5410, HiKey board from 96boards.org, Mustang (XC-1), OMAP5432, Renesas R-Car H2, Versatile Express and Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale MPSoC
TODO: Add headline for specific thing to test
Xen 4.7 supports ... <new feature>
<Add some instructions on how to test the new feature>
Specific x86 Test Instructions
Intel Code and Data Prioritization (CDP)
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To Do:
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Code and Data Prioritization (CDP) Technology is an extension of CAT, which is available on Intel Broadwell and later server platforms. CDP enables isolation and separate prioritization of code and data fetches to the L3 cache in a software configurable manner, which can enable workload prioritization and tuning of cache capacity to the characteristics of the workload. CDP extends Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) by providing separate code and data masks per Class of Service (COS).
For more information see:
COLO - Coarse Grain Lock Stepping
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To Do:
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TODO: Add headline for specific thing to test
Xen 4.7 supports ... <new feature>
<Add some instructions on how to test the new feature>
RC specific things to test
RC2
- XSM and driver domain: start xl devd in driver domain, and see if there is XSM denial message shown in xl dmesg.
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 (please CC the relevant maintainers and the Release Manager - wei dot liu2 at citrix dot com).
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 4.7.0-<Some RC> 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!
