Another round of updates just pushed out. Some of the mirrors are still syncing so you may have to be a little patient.

NOTE: You will need to upgrade to kernel-xen-release 6-3 or above to get these updates.

Kernel changes:

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* Mon Feb 20 2012 Steven Haigh <netwiz@crc.id.au> - kernel-xen-2.6.32.56-1
- Linux 2.6.32.56
  USB: ftdi_sio: fix initial baud rate
  USB: cp210x: do not map baud rates to B0
  USB: serial: CP210x: Added USB-ID for the Link Instruments MSO-19
  hwmon: (sht15) fix bad error code
  hwmon: (f71805f) Fix clamping of temperature limits
  USB: usbsevseg: fix max length
  usb: io_ti: Make edge_remove_sysfs_attrs the port_remove method.
  USB: cdc-wdm: updating desc-&gt;length must be protected by spin_lock
  USB: ftdi_sio: Add more identifiers
  USB: serial: ftdi additional IDs
  USB: ftdi_sio: add PID for TI XDS100v2 / BeagleBone A3
  USB: ftdi_sio: fix TIOCSSERIAL baud_base handling
  dm: do not forward ioctls from logical volumes to the underlying device
  block: fail SCSI passthrough ioctls on partition devices
  Revert "ARM: 7220/1: mmc: mmci: Fixup error handling for dma"
  crypto: sha512 - reduce stack usage to safe number
  crypto: sha512 - make it work, undo percpu message schedule
  drm: Fix authentication kernel crash
  eCryptfs: Make truncate path killable
  ecryptfs: Improve metadata read failure logging
  eCryptfs: Sanitize write counts of /dev/ecryptfs</netwiz></code>

Xen changes:

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* Thu Feb 02 2012 Michael Young <m .a.young> - 4.1.2-6
- Fix buffer overflow in e1000 emulation for HVM guests [CVE-2012-0029]

* Sat Jan 28 2012 Michael Young </m><m .a.young> - 4.1.2-5
- Start building xen's ocaml libraries if appropriate unless --without ocaml
  was specified
- add some backported patches from xen unstable (via Debian) for some
  ocaml tidying and fixes

After a monster effort of building kernels, the 32 bit version of my Xen Dom0 kernel is now available for testing.

Installation procedure is exactly the same as for x86_64. The howto can be followed here.

Bug reports are most welcome via the new mailing list.

As there are no changes to the x86_64 kernel, I have not bumped the version number for 64 bit builds. The build numbers will come back into sync when we go to kernel 2.6.32.56.

I’ve been doing a little work on the development and repo hosting side of things. We now have 5 mirrors around the globe mirroring these packages. Sadly, they don’t always update at the same time - so today I’ve implemented a script to check each mirror hourly and either add or remove it from the mirror pool as they change into or out of sync.

This brings me to the next change. I’ve updated the kernel-xen-release package to revision 3 now. This uses the mirrorlist directive by default to take advantage of the script mentioned above to automatically exclude out of sync mirrors… This is a much more flexible system and will cause less errors as updates are pushed out to mirrors.

The third change is that I have now also build Xen for a 32 bit (i386) environment. I am still working on a kernel for this - so work is not yet complete - however the core hypervisor and associated tools as well as an updated bridge-utils package is also available for use on 32 bit systems. Once I get a successful kernel build, I’ll be making it available via the 32 bit repo.

The fourth and final change today is the addition of the $basearch tag in all mirrors. This will allow compatibility with all systems I’d expect to see Xen packages for without having to change too may things manually.

The update to kernel-xen-release-6-3 should be pain free using yum -y update kernel-xen-release and you’ll need to do this to be able to continue using the repo going forward.

I’ve made a number of changes to the kernel-xen repo today - and it will probably break a lot of things for everyone except new installs - however the pain is worth it… Here’s why:

1) All RPM packages are now signed with a 4096 bit key. Now I’ve got mirror sites popping up its probably a good thing to sign them to ensure your safety and that they haven’t been altered.

2) There are now 4 mirrors and counting for packages. This means you’ll get faster downloads and upgrades in the future.

3) I don’t have to roll out a new kernel-xen package for every update to the mirrors!

The problem?

Well, versions of kernel-xen older than 2.6.32.55-4 contain the file we use to set the mirrors and contains all the repo config. At the beginning, this didn’t matter - however as changes to mirrors happen, the only way to update each and every system with new mirrors is to roll a new kernel RPM! This is a bad thing.

To combat this, I’ve created a new package called kernel-xen-release. This contains the new GPG signature for the packages and also the repo config file /etc/yum.repos.d/kernel-xen.repo. This means changes to the mirrors can be done with a simple 10Kb update instead of the entire kernel.

Now, why it breaks:

You never want to UPGRADE a kernel RPM. Doing this would remove the running kernel from under your running system and replace it with the newer one. Generally, removing the running kernel is NASTY. However, this now causes an issue that if you have kernel-xen-2.6.32.55-3 installed, it will conflict with the new kernel-xen-release package!

At this stage, I can’t figure out a workaround that will cause this to go smoothly for upgrades, so the only real fix I can think of right now is to remove all kernels at or below 2.6.32.55-3 and manually install 2.6.32.55-4 and kernel-xen-release. You’ll also notice that kernel-xen-release requires yum-plugin-fastestmirror. This will make sure you get your updates from the fastest mirror around.

So in a nutshell, sorry for breaking your upgrade path! If I had thought ahead on how things would pan out, I would have split up the repo config from the kernel from day #1, but I didn’t see it being as popular as it has been and requiring mirrors from around the world!

How to fix this?

Thankfully, its quite easy:

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# wget http://www.crc.id.au/repo/x86_64/kernel-xen-2.6.32.55-4.x86_64.rpm
# rpm -ivh --nodeps kernel-xen-2.6.32.55-4.x86_64.rpm

Edit /etc/grub.conf and set the default to 2.6.32.55-4, then reboot your system. Keep in mind you’ll have to add the kernel line for xen.gz and modify the existing KERNEL and INITRD lines to MODULE.

After rebooting, erase the old kernels (anything older than 2.6.32.55-4) and install the new kernel-xen-release package:

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# yum erase kernel-xen-2.6.32.55-3
# yum install http://www.crc.id.au/repo/x86_64/kernel-xen-release-6-2.x86_64.rpm

In a bid to provider better service to people using my repo for Xen Dom0 kernels for EL6, I’ve put in place two mirror sites which yum will be able to use.

I recommend to everyone using my repo to install the yum-plugin-fastestmirror plugin for yum and to also redownload /etc/yum.repos.d/kernel-xen.repo from here

If you are able to offer a stable mirror for this repository in another country, please email me!