Xen 4.7 RC 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 4.7 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
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
andINSTALL
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 ARM Test Instructions
Follow Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions and Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions#Testing
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.
RC specific things to test
RC2
None at this time.
Known Issues
= RC2=
None at this time.
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!