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Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37694] Sat, 10 October 2009 21:16 Go to next message
gkovacs is currently offline  gkovacs
Messages: 3
Registered: October 2009
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Junior Member
As the current stable Linux kernel is rapidly approaching the 2.6.32 version, including a lot of exciting drivers and technologies (like the ext4 filesystem), I wonder what are the plans of the OpenVZ developers for a new development kernel branch?

- What kernel version is planned?
- In what timeframe can we expect it?

Also, when is the stable branch going to be stepped up from the 3 year old 2.6.18? I tried searching for a roadmap in the OpenVZ Wiki, but it's not available.

Is OpenVZ under active development?

[Updated on: Sat, 10 October 2009 21:20]

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37734 is a reply to message #37694] Thu, 15 October 2009 07:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
I'd like to echo your sentiments here. 2.6.32 is on the horizon, and pretty soon we will be looking at a situation wherein the driver support of 2.6.27 would be insufficient for the loads of new hardware coming out. This is scary and makes me rethink my initial decision to deploy OpenVZ-based solutions.

Can anyone from the project at least give us some reassurance that OpenVZ will be available on the latest kernels soon? Or maybe at least provide a patch to backport drivers from the latest tree to 2.6.27... (if it's at all possible).

Please, someone from OpenVZ speak up...

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37762 is a reply to message #37734] Sun, 18 October 2009 00:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ramjet is currently offline  ramjet
Messages: 16
Registered: September 2009
Junior Member
Check out Proxmox VE which is based on OpenVZ. It is under active development. Version 1.4 will have some new cool feaures: http://www.proxmox.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37780 is a reply to message #37762] Tue, 20 October 2009 17:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
Are there newer kernels available? I mean from the wiki I see this:

Quote:

uname -a

Expected output:
2.6.24-8-pve #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 16 11:17:55 CEST 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux



which is even more ancient then the 2.6.27 kernels that are available here.

Here is the link:

http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Downloads

[Updated on: Tue, 20 October 2009 17:30]

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37791 is a reply to message #37762] Thu, 22 October 2009 14:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gkovacs is currently offline  gkovacs
Messages: 3
Registered: October 2009
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Junior Member
Please don't hijack this thread, which was about the missing OpenVZ kernel development roadmap, not Proxmox (which I know and use, btw).

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37905 is a reply to message #37791] Sat, 31 October 2009 11:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
squik is currently offline  squik
Messages: 4
Registered: October 2008
Junior Member

Hi,

I agree,
I have a bunch of fonctionality missing with the one year old kernel ! (latest openvz kernel 2.6.27 october 2008)

I am very _very_ happy with openvz but I am looking slowly to vserver ! this is very sad as I cannot much help porting openvz to new kernels. I thought you were nearly in mainline with all this patchsets accepted !

Regards.

Nicolas

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37916 is a reply to message #37694] Mon, 02 November 2009 06:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
sylvester_0 is currently offline  sylvester_0
Messages: 4
Registered: August 2009
Junior Member
Add me to the list of people wondering about OpenVZ development. With Ubuntu 9.10 just being released, we're just 6 months away from a new LTS! However, I don't see signs of any work going towards porting to the newer kernels Sad If development has been abandoned it would be better to know sooner than later so I can plan my move to an active project like Xen or KVM. Thanks!

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37934 is a reply to message #37694] Tue, 03 November 2009 22:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
matrix64 is currently offline  matrix64
Messages: 4
Registered: November 2009
Junior Member
Based on the lack of developer responses, no new kernel releases and no meaningful blog entries, we concluded that OpenVZ is unmaintained, which effectively means - dead. It's a shame really as we liked this principle of virtualization. We'll be moving to KVM.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37935 is a reply to message #37934] Wed, 04 November 2009 09:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
schjeall is currently offline  schjeall
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2009
Location: Denmark
Junior Member
Hi all

Can't judge if OpenVZ is dying, but I think it most likely won't happen. OpenVZ is the basis of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, a commercial virtulization solution which are used by many hosting companies around the world.

OpenVZ follows what ever kernel Red Hat uses in their commercial products. The kernel version for RH 5 is 2.6.18-164 I think.

Anyway, my attitude about OpenVZ is to accept this fact and avoid development branches. This means I won't be able to use the newest features in the vanilla Linux kernel of course!

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37937 is a reply to message #37935] Wed, 04 November 2009 18:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
Has anyone tried Linux Containers? It's supposedly the result of a lot of code contributions from the OpenVZ Team. And this has been part of *mainline* since 2.6.27.

I don't believe that KVM is the logical next step from openvz (if it is indeed dead). But it could well be LXC.

http://lxc.sourceforge.net

Of course, the best solution would still be for us to have an OpenVZ patch for 2.6.31/32. It would really help remove some apprehension from us openvz adopters if something would be said about it's future by its creators.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37938 is a reply to message #37937] Wed, 04 November 2009 18:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
Quote:
Has anyone tried Linux Containers?


Never heard of this. Thanks.

Quote:
I don't believe that KVM is the logical next step from openvz


Me either these are different technologies. KVM (virtualbox, vmware, xen ...) are all significantly slower when it comes to filesystem performance and these also require a complete new kernel... So they are much more heavy in terms of memory and disk usage.

Linux Vserver is a second option.

http://linux-vserver.org/Welcome_to_Linux-VServer.org

This is similar to openvz but lacks a lot of the networking and resource limiting functionality of openvz. Its more like a chroot jail with some network separation. The good thing about this technology is that since the patch is much less than openvz the kernel is usually kept current.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37939 is a reply to message #37937] Wed, 04 November 2009 18:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
BTW, I do not believe openvz is dead. I think the developers are focusing their effort on the RHEL kernels and commercial kernels. When red hat uses a 2.26.3X kernel in there next RHEL product I expect to see a openvz kernel for that.

Edit: Hmm 2.26 sounds more like gnome although they would never have a 30th patch release. I meant RHEL 6 having a 2.6.3X kernel

[Updated on: Thu, 05 November 2009 14:05]

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37947 is a reply to message #37939] Thu, 05 November 2009 13:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JimL is currently offline  JimL
Messages: 116
Registered: February 2007
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That no one with any authority has yet to comment on this issue and the recent discovery of an apparently serious kernel bug (See http:// linux.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/0320254/Bug-In-Most-Linuxe s-Can-Give-Untrusted-Users-Root?art_pos=1 is deeply concerning. If anyone can address this with any authority, please do so, or I'm going to reconsider using OpenVZ for any further deployment. It's not like there are no viable alternatives. I was delighted to discover how easy Sun's VirtualBox installed on Ubuntu.

Don't get me wrong, I've been a very vocal advocate for OpenVZ for a while now, but this lack of any response to a valid question had me concerned that OpenVZ might be going down the tubes. I'm not a fan of riding dying horses.

Jim.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37948 is a reply to message #37947] Thu, 05 November 2009 13:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
Looking at my openvz kernel source on the desktop. I do not have that patch applied. But at least in this case the patch appears that would be easily applied.

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6 .git;a=commitdiff;h=ad3960243e55320d74195fb85c975e0a8cc4466c

I understand though, this will not be the only security bug. If I have time I will file a bug report in my distro on this. Since they have already have patched openvz to 2.6.27.37.

[Updated on: Thu, 05 November 2009 15:00]

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37950 is a reply to message #37948] Thu, 05 November 2009 15:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
Does anyone know the email address of any of the developers? Maybe we can send him an email and point him to this thread...

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37952 is a reply to message #37694] Thu, 05 November 2009 16:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
I would file a bug report for this bug in the openvz bug reporting mechanism.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37954 is a reply to message #37694] Fri, 06 November 2009 01:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ales is currently offline  Ales
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2009
Senior Member
I can't imagine how much work is done behind the scenes as we speak, but the last released kernel was ovzkernel-2.6.18-128.2.1.el5.028stab064.7 on 2nd of September, 2009.

That was more than three months ago (!). Numerous critical vulnerabilities were discovered in the mean time and Red Hat has released five updated kernels since.

kernel-2.6.18-128.4.1.el5.src.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.src.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-164.el5.src.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.src.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-164.6.1.el5.src.rpm

I can understand ovzkernel being a couple of days behind Redhat or even couple of days behind CentOS. But three months and five kernels behind...?

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37966 is a reply to message #37694] Fri, 06 November 2009 13:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
Messages: 24
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
I've tried to point upstream's attention to this topic but still got no answer and I do not see any answer here. This uncertain situation forced us to move on lxc and they work quite nice in case you don't need checkpointing or some specific networking inside containers. Just use recent kernels, enjoy real upstream solution and remember that openvz guys did a great work on this front either Smile


As far as security concerned, in Gentoo we merge patches from stable 2.6.27 branch into openvz sources so known serious bugs are fixed in Gentoo openvz patchset. The last vulnerability found will be addressed as soon as Greg uploads new stable (2.6.27.39) release.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37979 is a reply to message #37966] Fri, 06 November 2009 17:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
So LXC is ready for production? I don't really use checkpointing, and veth, not even fiddling around with user_beancounters (everything is set to unlimited (*grin*). Will an existing openvz container run unmodified under lxc?

This is the kind of feedback i was hoping for...

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37980 is a reply to message #37966] Fri, 06 November 2009 17:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
Would it be possible for you to post a link to the Gentoo OpenVZ patchset for 2.6.27? Smile

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37981 is a reply to message #37694] Fri, 06 November 2009 17:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
The 2.6.27.37 patch is

linux-2.6.27-openvz-2.6.27.37-merge.patch.bz2

It should be in the distfiles folder of any gentoo mirror.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors2.xml

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37982 is a reply to message #37980] Fri, 06 November 2009 17:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
Sorry. I accidentally posted a reply in the wrong place..

The 2.6.27.37 patch is

linux-2.6.27-openvz-2.6.27.37-merge.patch.bz2

It should be in the distfiles folder of any gentoo mirror.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors2.xml

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37986 is a reply to message #37982] Sat, 07 November 2009 07:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
Messages: 24
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member
Yes, we've managed to run CT's practically unmodified. Some changes were required for openrc (gentoo init system) and a bit of tweaks in lxc scripts. In general lxc is not polished but looks like it is ready to be used.

And yes - linux-2.6.27-openvz-2.6.27.37-merge.patch.bz2 is on the mirrors. Apply it after 2.6.27-briullov.1. It includes only fixes that could be found in openvz git repository + merge up to 2.6.27.37.

http://packages.gentoo.org/package/sys-kernel/openvz-sources

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #37997 is a reply to message #37986] Sat, 07 November 2009 15:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
That's interesting. Thanks for the link. Looks like it's time to move to lxc, then.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38004 is a reply to message #37694] Sun, 08 November 2009 19:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JimL is currently offline  JimL
Messages: 116
Registered: February 2007
Senior Member
Kir has reappeared on the support forum, perhaps we should address this topic on that forum since they don't seem to be monitoring this one.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38009 is a reply to message #37694] Sun, 08 November 2009 22:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ales is currently offline  Ales
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2009
Senior Member
I wouldn't say the project is abandoned, I mean we can see the work being done (git, rhel4 kernel, etc.) but rhel5 ovz kernel is lagging behind... That's a bit disturbing, when all the recent rhel security updates are taken into account.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38013 is a reply to message #37938] Mon, 09 November 2009 08:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
sh1ny is currently offline  sh1ny
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2009
Junior Member
drescherjm wrote on Wed, 04 November 2009 13:24
Quote:
Has anyone tried Linux Containers?


Never heard of this. Thanks.

Quote:
I don't believe that KVM is the logical next step from openvz


Me either these are different technologies. KVM (virtualbox, vmware, xen ...) are all significantly slower when it comes to filesystem performance and these also require a complete new kernel... So they are much more heavy in terms of memory and disk usage.

Linux Vserver is a second option.

http://linux-vserver.org/Welcome_to_Linux-VServer.org

This is similar to openvz but lacks a lot of the networking and resource limiting functionality of openvz. Its more like a chroot jail with some network separation. The good thing about this technology is that since the patch is much less than openvz the kernel is usually kept current.



Actually for KVM you don't need a complete new kernel. Infact, you don't need any special kernel at all, since KVM is part of the mainstream kernel.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38014 is a reply to message #38013] Mon, 09 November 2009 10:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
LXC (lxc.sourceforge.net) is also part of the mainline kernel now. Right now, i'm more inclined on spending my time defining a migration path from openvz to lxc... Maybe a howto document or a script to make the migration seamless.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38015 is a reply to message #38009] Mon, 09 November 2009 10:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
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Last modification in the tree of Gorcunov
is dated:

Cyrill Gorcunov [Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:22:21 +0000]

I'd say no work is being done anymore.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38017 is a reply to message #38015] Mon, 09 November 2009 11:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
JimL is currently offline  JimL
Messages: 116
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I posted a message on the Support forum telling of our concerns over here and suggesting that someone respond. Obviously they don't think the Discussions forum is important. Anyway Kir said that they released two new kernels today. Why they won't reply to this thread I have no idea.

Jim.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38018 is a reply to message #38015] Mon, 09 November 2009 11:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
Messages: 24
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iansison wrote on Mon, 09 November 2009 13:36
Cyrill Gorcunov [Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:22:21 +0000]

I'd say no work is being done anymore.


Could you provide any link, please? Where this was told?

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38023 is a reply to message #38013] Mon, 09 November 2009 13:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drescherjm is currently offline  drescherjm
Messages: 27
Registered: February 2008
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I did not mean KVM required a special kernel just that guests need a full kernel install to run so it is more heavy than a container approach. Also disk and overall performance is in no way as good as a container approach. If you do not believe me try compiling kde, a kernel or some other large library in any of these then do the same in a container. I have found that this takes 2 to 5 times longer in xen, vmware, virtualbox,kvm on good modern hardware with the hardware virtulization acceleration enabled versus the real hardware and only a few percent longer in a container.

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38024 is a reply to message #38023] Mon, 09 November 2009 13:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
sh1ny is currently offline  sh1ny
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2009
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drescherjm wrote on Mon, 09 November 2009 08:28
I did not mean KVM required a special kernel just that guests need a full kernel install to run so it is more heavy than a container approach. Also disk and overall performance is in no way as good as a container approach. If you do not believe me try compiling kde, a kernel or some other large library in any of these then do the same in a container. I have found that this takes 2 to 5 times longer in xen, vmware, virtualbox,kvm on good modern hardware with the hardware virtulization acceleration enabled versus the real hardware and only a few percent longer in a container.


Ofcourse, there's no objection to that. I found myself preferring KVM to Openvz for other, pure egoistic reasons - i don't run into upgrade issues with customers for one. Every time someone does a "do-release-upgrade" in ubuntu in an openvz container, i have to fix it after him, after hearing thousands of complaints about it Very Happy

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Re: Any news on a new kernel branch? [message #38118 is a reply to message #37694] Thu, 19 November 2009 15:05 Go to previous message
kir is currently offline  kir
Messages: 1645
Registered: August 2005
Location: Moscow, Russia
Senior Member
Guys,

I'm really sorry for not replying here earlier. As it was mentioned above in this thread, there are some answers in the other thread titled There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported.

Kir Kolyshkin
http://static.openvz.org/userbars/openvz-developer.png

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