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There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38005] Sun, 08 November 2009 19:34 Go to next message
JimL is currently offline  JimL
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See the discussion on the General/discussions forum page.

We have asked over there about the status of newer kernels but no one from the development team has responded. A number of us are about to jump ship and start deploying different solutions for implementing virtual systems thinking that OpenVZ may be dead or dying. I don't want to but it looks like OpenVZ is no longer being maintained. What say the developers?

Jim.

[Updated on: Sun, 08 November 2009 19:35]

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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38007 is a reply to message #38005] Sun, 08 November 2009 21:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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We have just released two kernel updates today.

Kir Kolyshkin
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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38020 is a reply to message #38007] Mon, 09 November 2009 12:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
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What kernel versions?

The kernel trees in http://git.openvz.org has seen no movement in several months...

It would be nice if some of you would speak out as to what we can expect from openvz in the short to medium term, so we can make plans of our own. As it is, we're a bunch of "hanging threads"

- ian
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38021 is a reply to message #38020] Mon, 09 November 2009 12:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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All the kernel updates are published at announce@ mailing list (http://wiki.openvz.org/Mailing_lists) AND at http://wiki.openvz.org/News/updates (also see the sidebar at the main wiki page). The last update was released last Saturday, fixing a serious security flaw. Yes the kernel support team and the QA team had to work last Saturday until about 11pm in order to release this update, because of its importance.

The only stable and maintained branches we have now are RHEL4 and RHEL5-based. For those branches updates are guaranteed (if we can talk about guarantees here).

2.6.24, 2.6.26 and 2.6.27 are all development branches, never ever recommended for production, and yes, we kinda stopped maintaining those.

We will probably be opening another devel branch soon, based on 2.6.32.

Speaking of tools, take a look at activity in vzctl's git, you'll see quite a number of new patches flowing it.

Ergo, OpenVZ is not dead. That should not preclude you from trying out other solutions if you feel like it. Diversity is good.


Kir Kolyshkin
http://static.openvz.org/userbars/openvz-developer.png
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38025 is a reply to message #38021] Mon, 09 November 2009 13:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
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Thanks for the update.

Would you have a timetable for 2.6.32?

I'd say that maintaining an openvz-RHEL kernel is good but but 2.6.18 is really old and that leaves out the enterprise kernels from other distros (debian? ubuntu? suse?), and more importantly it leaves out having an openvz-enabled kernel that has all the hardware support and features from the latest kernel version.

Having patchsets against relatively recent kernels helps us roll our own openvz kernels... i hope you can reconsider releasing a patchset for the recent kernel versions.




Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38026 is a reply to message #38025] Mon, 09 November 2009 13:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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Quote:
2.6.18 is really old


While 2.6.18 is old, RHEL5 kernel is not. Red Hat guys backport bugfixes, features and drivers from newer kernels, so it's relatively modern and up-to-date kernel.

Quote:
that leaves out the enterprise kernels from other distros (debian? ubuntu? suse?)


RHEL5-based OpenVZ kernel should run fine on the abovementioned distros, it is not just for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And since we have a limited resources currently we can not suggest anything better than to actually use this kernel on such distros.

Quote:
Would you have a timetable for 2.6.32?


The work is not even started, and unfortunately I can not give any estimations.


Kir Kolyshkin
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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38029 is a reply to message #38026] Mon, 09 November 2009 15:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
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Well there you go, the word is out. And many thanks to Kir for clearing this up once and for all.

As for the RH 2.6.18 kernel, it's true that RH has fixed whatever security issues and backported some features and drivers, but they can only do so much. So for me, the RH Kernel is not enough.

I'll be eagerly awaiting OpenVZ for 2.6.32, though... Surprised
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38030 is a reply to message #38029] Mon, 09 November 2009 15:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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Quote:
So for me, the RH Kernel is not enough.


If some hardware is not working for you with RHEL5 kernel or you miss a feature, please report it to bugzilla -- we do care for such stuff.


Kir Kolyshkin
http://static.openvz.org/userbars/openvz-developer.png
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38037 is a reply to message #38005] Tue, 10 November 2009 22:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ales is currently offline  Ales
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I'm not a kernel developer, as probably many of the users here aren't, so some additional information would be helpful to understand openvz's side of things better.

Is the difference between the redhat's 2.6.18-128.x and 2.6.18-164.x kernel so great, that it's easier for your team to backport fixes into an older base?

I assumed that because of Redhat's consistency of the kernel ABI/API, moving on should be pretty straightforward. I guess it isn't?

Personally, I'm looking forward to simplifying our deployment of ovzkernel + KVM kernel modules. We are compiling them ourselves for the time being.

I guess forums can sometimes give a false impression that many users are unsatisfied... that isn't the case on our end, anyway. We've been Plesk's and later SwSoft's customers for almost a decade now and can appreciate this great contribution to the open source community.

Wiki, blog, forum... and still the perceived lack of communication arises now and then... something we can all learn from and apply when running our sites. Shocked Cool
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38038 is a reply to message #38037] Tue, 10 November 2009 23:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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Ales wrote on Wed, 11 November 2009 01:49
Is the difference between the redhat's 2.6.18-128.x and 2.6.18-164.x kernel so great, that it's easier for your team to backport fixes into an older base?


I have already answered this elsewhere (http://bugzilla.openvz.org/1358) so below is semi copy-paste.

The last update was a high priority security update, and for such updates we prefer to not do a full rebase, but rather take the proven stable already well-tested kernel and just patch the security hole(s) in order to minimize potential stability problems and make a QA cycle faster. This is exactly what we did this time. The CVE is dated Nov 3, our updates were published Nov 7 -- we just can not achieve it with a full QA cycle.

Quote:
I assumed that because of Redhat's consistency of the kernel ABI/API, moving on should be pretty straightforward. I guess it isn't?


Now it's not -- internal kernel changes are quite significant and we have to port our code.

Having said that, we already have some test builds based on that kernel, they are in QA and will eventually be released. It is indeed a lot of changes and therefore requires a lot of testing (i.e. a full QA cycle). During the QA we usually find bugs in both our code and Red Hat's code (I blogged about it about a year ago), so it's definitely worth it.


Kir Kolyshkin
http://static.openvz.org/userbars/openvz-developer.png
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38040 is a reply to message #38005] Wed, 11 November 2009 02:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mhw is currently offline  mhw
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Some "features" do not get backported for a variety of reasons. One amongst several for me right now is the MD5 signatures on TCP sessions (CONFIG_TCP_MD5SIG) which is required for some BGP sessions when peering with ISP's that require it. It's not in 2.6.18 nor would I expect it to ever get backported (limited applicability and non-trivial). There's also some IPv6 stuff that is significantly improved in more recent kernels for standards compliance.

The question arises, though, with 2.6.32... How is the support going to manifest itself? Will the vz utilities be enhanced to utilize the lxc containers that everyone has been working so hard on or is it going to be another kernel patch for the vz feature set? Is there something missing from the lxc implementation / feature set which infeasible?

[Updated on: Wed, 11 November 2009 02:46]

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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38121 is a reply to message #38021] Thu, 19 November 2009 18:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
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kir wrote on Mon, 09 November 2009 15:32
2.6.24, 2.6.26 and 2.6.27 are all development branches, never ever recommended for production, and yes, we kinda stopped maintaining those.


This basically means that you stopped support Gentoo.

We are unable to use rhel based kernels: they are too old to be used with newer toolchain and there is really large number of configurations that fail to build.

So currently I'm not sure what to do next: should we keep openvz kernel in Gentoo or should we suggest users other alternatives? 2.6.27 openvz kernel is just security nightmare as at least two really important security issues are there. Fortunately 2.6.27 is long maintained kernel upstream so I've managed to backport fixes from stable branch into openvz sources. But there are other openvz related bugs and even some fixes still sit in bugzilla! I really don't understand why it's so hard to add fixes straight to git and since I'm not capable to read all reports at openvz's bugzilla and merge fixes from there into our patchset I really wonder: is it worth to keep openvz-sources in Gentoo? For me it looks like it's not very sane to encourage users use unmaintained technology...

And yes, there is sense to use Gentoo on HN since it makes possible to build everything with hardened toolchain and really drop everything unneeded.

[Updated on: Thu, 19 November 2009 18:47]

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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38137 is a reply to message #38121] Sun, 22 November 2009 21:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
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And just noticed other failure reports on 2.6.27:

https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21756
https://bugzilla.altlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22191

With another oops in bugzilla the question above became more burning.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38175 is a reply to message #38005] Wed, 25 November 2009 22:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lorddusty is currently offline  Lorddusty
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Hi,

I also run gentoo hostnodes and VEs.

But it is getting more and more difficult to build a consistent system with the current kernel available, as several configure-scripts check with `uname -r` which kernel we are running. No matter how many backports your 2.6.18 will have, if the upstream of a package expects 2.6.2X (or even 2.6.3X) those packages will fail to build. For some packages, there are workarounds available, but unfortunately not for all.

Also all current releases available for gentoo (2.6.18/2.6.24/2.6.27) have PMTU-Problems on IPv6. A bug report for this was opened in june (http://bugzilla.openvz.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1286) but the only thing ever happened to this bugreport were two words from Pavel Emelyanov: "To Vitaly"

Maybe I'm the only one wanting to use IPv6 inside containers, but I really can't believe this. There were lots of changes on IPv6 since 2.6.18 ... so hopefully we'll get some 2.6.3X soon.

Best regards
Jens

Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38178 is a reply to message #38005] Thu, 26 November 2009 14:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
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New kernel out but as we could guess that's 2.6.18 based kernel. The worst thing is that openvz related fixes are hidden somewhere. Just look at this bug report:

http://bugzilla.openvz.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1198

It was reported against 2.6.27 but fix entered only 2.6.18 and no link on patch or whatever exists there. Bug is closed while user still have that problem!

Although openvz is alive for RHEL users but it is dead for us.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38381 is a reply to message #38005] Sun, 13 December 2009 10:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
aTan is currently offline  aTan
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Are there any news about supporting newer kernels? Or is OVZ really dead for people not using RHEL?
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38382 is a reply to message #38381] Sun, 13 December 2009 11:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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aTan wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 13:52
Are there any news about supporting newer kernels? Or is OVZ really dead for people not using RHEL?


Again (and again): you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based kernel. Believe it or not, you can run this kernel on most of the other distros just fine.

As for the news -- no news so far.


Kir Kolyshkin
http://static.openvz.org/userbars/openvz-developer.png
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38383 is a reply to message #38005] Sun, 13 December 2009 13:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
aTan is currently offline  aTan
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I'm aware of it, but 2.6.18 is just old. And as it was said above doesn't fulfill todays needs even with some backported stuff. Could you just say you won't support newer kernels in the near future (maybe until RH customers will need it), so people can stop hoping for it and try find some other solutions for their needs or at least put up with this? I guess people will appreciate it and also won't bother you with this question in the future. Sticking it in Support forum will be also fine.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38385 is a reply to message #38383] Sun, 13 December 2009 14:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Paparaciz
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aTan wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 15:39
I'm aware of it, but 2.6.18 is just old. And as it was said above doesn't fulfill todays needs even with some backported stuff. Could you just say you won't support newer kernels in the near future (maybe until RH customers will need it), so people can stop hoping for it and try find some other solutions for their needs or at least put up with this? I guess people will appreciate it and also won't bother you with this question in the future. Sticking it in Support forum will be also fine.


what exactly doesn't work for you in rhel kernel 2.6.18?

also keep in mind that in next year redhat should release rhel6 version which will be based on newer kernel (i guess that it would be 2.6.3x).
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38387 is a reply to message #38005] Sun, 13 December 2009 15:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
matrix64 is currently offline  matrix64
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Ubuntu 10.04 will be a LTS (long term support) release with 2.6.32 kernel and so it would make sense to make OpenVZ patches for that kernel version.

I think the reason why people don't want to go from 2.6.27 back to 2.6.18-rhel is because they think going to older kernels is a bad thing, so it's mostly psychological. There are some valid reasons too, like driver support if you have a newer hardware.

It would be much better to have supported OpenVZ patches follow Ubuntu release schedule (every 6 months) than RHEL with a schedule of several years. Linux is constantly evolving and you simply cannot afford to stay behind.

It would be great for OpenVZ to have good public relations. As it is, it takes months to get any info from the developers, there are no real news about the new developments or anything. All that users can do is sit, wait and wonder. Not enough communication is the reason why rumors start, which more often than not, are false and only hurt your product.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38388 is a reply to message #38382] Sun, 13 December 2009 15:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
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kir wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 14:36

Again (and again): you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based kernel. Believe it or not, you can run this kernel on most of the other distros just fine.


Please, stop telling this nonsense. No offense, but I just did short search on what kernels use other distributions:

altlinux: 5.0 (current) branch uses 2.6.27 kernel
suse (11.1): 2.6.27
mandriva: 2.6.26
debian(!): lenny uses 2.6.26

Nobody but RHEL based distributions use 2.6.18! And no mater how many times you state here that we should be happy with more then 3 years old kernel, reality is different and Gentoo is not alone in this sink boat. I saw bug reports on oops opened in debian that have their counter part in openvz bugzilla with no progress.

As a side note Mandriva discuss dropping unsupported openvz kernel from contrib as kernel is unsupported: http://lists.mandriva.com/maintainers/2009-09/msg00001.php . Yes openvz kernels became unsupported and support is lost upstream...
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38389 is a reply to message #38388] Sun, 13 December 2009 15:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Paparaciz
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pva0xd wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 17:49
kir wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 14:36

Again (and again): you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based kernel. Believe it or not, you can run this kernel on most of the other distros just fine.


Please, stop telling this nonsense. No offense, but I just did short search on what kernels use other distributions:

altlinux: 5.0 (current) branch uses 2.6.27 kernel
suse (11.1): 2.6.27
mandriva: 2.6.26
debian(!): lenny uses 2.6.26


in all modern distributions you should not consider version number as it is.
redhat backports a lot of stuff to that kernel from more modern kernels. other distributions does the same for all packages not only kernel.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38390 is a reply to message #38388] Sun, 13 December 2009 16:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
kir is currently offline  kir
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pva0xd wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 18:49
kir wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 14:36

Again (and again): you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based kernel. Believe it or not, you can run this kernel on most of the other distros just fine.


Please, stop telling this nonsense.


What I said (and you can clearly see this from my quote above)
(1) is you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based OpenVZ kernels;
(2) You can run RHEL5 based OpenVZ kernel on most of the other (i.e. non-RHEL5) distros.

Now, you are telling me it's nonsense and provide some information about what kernels some distros are using.

I am sorry but I can not get the connection here -- why the information that ALTLINUX uses 2.6.27-based kernel (and Mandriva uses 2.6.26-based one, and so on) lead you to the conclusion that I'm telling nonsense (i.e. either my point (1) or (2) above (or both) is/are invalid)?

Believe me or not, we are doing the best we can -- for now we only have resources to support RHEL5-based kernels, plus I hope we will start porting to 2.6.32/RHEL6 in some non-too-distant future.


Kir Kolyshkin
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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38391 is a reply to message #38385] Sun, 13 December 2009 16:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
aTan is currently offline  aTan
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Paparaciz wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 15:35
aTan wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 15:39
I'm aware of it, but 2.6.18 is just old. And as it was said above doesn't fulfill todays needs even with some backported stuff. Could you just say you won't support newer kernels in the near future (maybe until RH customers will need it), so people can stop hoping for it and try find some other solutions for their needs or at least put up with this? I guess people will appreciate it and also won't bother you with this question in the future. Sticking it in Support forum will be also fine.


what exactly doesn't work for you in rhel kernel 2.6.18?

also keep in mind that in next year redhat should release rhel6 version which will be based on newer kernel (i guess that it would be 2.6.3x).



For me (small company's needs) it's just: no xtables, no upstream IPv6, some 3rd party patches (imq, (e)sfq, etc) are provided only for new kernels, it's slower (not such a big deal). And I'm sure there will be a lot more issues if I'll try to downgrade from 2.6.27 (udev needs at leas 2.6.25 since version 145, newer toolchain (gcc4.4, binutils 2.20) can has problems with 2.6.18, etc). And I'm sure there must be a lot other problems I'm not aware of. It's not only about last number in a kernel version.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38392 is a reply to message #38391] Sun, 13 December 2009 17:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Paparaciz
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aTan wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 18:31

For me (small company's needs) it's just: no xtables, no upstream IPv6, some 3rd party patches (imq, (e)sfq, etc) are provided only for new kernels, it's slower (not such a big deal). And I'm sure there will be a lot more issues if I'll try to downgrade from 2.6.27 (udev needs at leas 2.6.25 since version 145, newer toolchain (gcc4.4, binutils 2.20) can has problems with 2.6.18, etc). And I'm sure there must be a lot other problems I'm not aware of. It's not only about last number in a kernel version.



ok, if this features so mission critical, why you don't try development openvz 2.6.27,2.6.26 versions?

I think that people miss main point- openvz dev team does what it can at best. rhel kernel is enterprise level, a lot of stuff is backported, but also there are not so much changes in minor releases, as it stands for enterprise, what means better older, but stable. Also think what does it means to keep in touch with newest kernel.org releases. you simple have to give too much time, because while you are looking at and adopting to some kernel release, at this time again could be next release.

I don't understand animosity from people. Look at openvz project as community driven. you as not happy user of project can give it back by adopting openvz to newest kernels. You even can hapily fork whole project. But just pointing that you(openvz team) are not doing what i want is silly.

I think that openvz made best decision to keep with rhel kernel. many hosting and virtualization service providers uses rhel based distributions (for example centos), and are very happy with that. what does it mean to choose bleeding edge kernel for hosting company? it means more often patching, rebooting and from that derives worse service availability.

For me, and for company where I work, stability is more important than super extra new features.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38393 is a reply to message #38392] Sun, 13 December 2009 17:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
aTan is currently offline  aTan
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Paparaciz wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 18:08

ok, if this features so mission critical, why you don't try development openvz 2.6.27,2.6.26 versions?


But I'm. 2.6.27 from Gentoo Portage which is not supported by openvz team anymore.

OpenVZ team is doing a great job. And I don't underestimate it. But there were a lack of information about development roadmap.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38394 is a reply to message #38390] Sun, 13 December 2009 17:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
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kir wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 19:28

What I said (and you can clearly see this from my quote above)
(1) is you do not have to use RHEL in order to use RHEL-based OpenVZ kernels;
(2) You can run RHEL5 based OpenVZ kernel on most of the other (i.e. non-RHEL5) distros.

Now, you are telling me it's nonsense and provide some information about what kernels some distros are using.

I am sorry but I can not get the connection here -- why the information that ALTLINUX uses 2.6.27-based kernel (and Mandriva uses 2.6.26-based one, and so on) lead you to the conclusion that I'm telling nonsense (i.e. either my point (1) or (2) above (or both) is/are invalid)?


Ok, let me explain this. I showed you that distributions do not use RHEL kernels. Since there is zero probability that anyone manages to dig openvz related fixes from one big hunk of code you provide us with (RHEL5 patchset + openvz patchset in one go), I'm sure that very few recent openvz related fixes get to distributions. This means that openvz upstream does not support all distributions but RHEL based and since the topic of this discussion is "There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported." repetition that 2.6.18 based kernels are supported is nonsense or at least does not justify that openvz is supported anywhere beside RHEL5.

kir wrote on Sun, 13 December 2009 19:28
Believe me or not, we are doing the best we can -- for now we only have resources to support RHEL5-based kernels, plus I hope we will start porting to 2.6.32/RHEL6 in some non-too-distant future.


While new branch sounds great, without change in workflow it just makes problem a bit less visible, but still new branch will not fix the problem. The greatest concern is that at some point of time after creation of new branch it will stop to evolve and while we will see new RHEL based kernels and ChangeLog will tell us that some openvz related fixes are there, git will keep silence and these fixes became inaccessible for those who are unable to use RHEL kernels. The only change in workflow I'm looking for is - please, update git whenever something was fixed in openvz. It is understandable why you use RHEL patchset after all and why production kernels are based on it, but it's hard to see why patches are provided as one big hunk of code without real possibility to separate RHEL changes from openvz. So, please, if you start new branch do not abandon it, like it is now! Just commit fixes there so we could see, test and use the progress. As a side result of this workflow you will have more beta testers and this will help you to release more well tested kernels (then with internal testing process you have now). This workflow looks easy but probably I'm completely wrong here and there are reasons to drop git at some point of time and leave community with known bugs.

Any way thanks, that you still answer here, Kir. It's really appreciated that upstream at least tries to hear us.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #38395 is a reply to message #38390] Sun, 13 December 2009 22:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lorddusty is currently offline  Lorddusty
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Hi,

well, it's nice to read (although it's not new to me) that RHEL Kernel would work on other distros... I mean, who is wondering, we are all talking about _LINUX_ distros.

Anyways, as already mentioned earlier, lot's of userspace tools, e.g. iptables or apr require special features in Kernel. Even if those features are being backported into 2.6.18 RHEL, the user-space configure does not know about it and as it uses uname to figure out, if the right kernel-version is being used, those userspace tools simply do not compile.

Another example is that OpenSuSE 11.2, which is the current stable-release, is not running without dirty-hacks (means recompilation of source-rpms from 11.1) as neither apache, nor postfix-rpms from this distros are working with neither latest RHEL 2.6.18 nor 2.6.24 (didn't try 2.6.27 branch as there DRBD was not running properly last time I tried)

Also the bug with IPv6-PMTU ... I really still would like to read an answer. I mean, I spent couple of hours to trace down where this came from, and I fed not to few info into bugzilla, but supporting a project by giving qualified bug reports seems not to make sense if there comes no reaction for several months.

I really like this project, and I really appreciate that at least KIR is replying to this thread, but I do not really see a perspective if both communication and development goes on in the current way.

Best regards
Jens
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42595 is a reply to message #38387] Wed, 04 May 2011 04:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iansison is currently offline  iansison
Messages: 17
Registered: March 2008
Junior Member
Well here we are and it's a little more than 14 months since the last post.

The 2.6.32 openvz kernel (feoktistov) seems to have lagged a bit from mainline longterm. The latest openvz kernel is still based on 2.6.32.28 while mainline longterm is already at 2.6.32.39.

I hope the openvz kernel hackers could release an update. We're getting quite a bit behind on the security and bugfix updates...


ian
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42596 is a reply to message #42595] Wed, 04 May 2011 06:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Paparaciz
Messages: 302
Registered: August 2009
Senior Member
you can use rhel6-testing kernel which:

http://wiki.openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel6/042test009.2
Rebase onto 2.6.32-71.24.1.el6 update (security, bug fixes)

and yesterday was released newver version:
http://wiki.openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel6/042test011.1/ch anges

keep in mind that this is development and not stable kernel

Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42720 is a reply to message #42596] Sun, 15 May 2011 10:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
pva0xd is currently offline  pva0xd
Messages: 24
Registered: February 2008
Junior Member

Paparaciz, please read topic before answer. I've already told why rHELL kernels are bad idea for Gentoo. Although may be I'll create ebuilds for them I'll doubt I'll be use/test them.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42729 is a reply to message #42720] Mon, 16 May 2011 14:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
drobbins is currently offline  drobbins
Messages: 1
Registered: May 2011
Location: Albquerque, NM
Junior Member
pva0xd wrote on Sun, 15 May 2011 04:11
Paparaciz, please read topic before answer. I've already told why rHELL kernels are bad idea for Gentoo. Although may be I'll create ebuilds for them I'll doubt I'll be use/test them.


I am the creator of Gentoo Linux and currently develop Funtoo Linux (docs.funtoo.org). I like OpenVZ and we maintain compatibility with OpenVZ RHEL5 kernels. We have RHEL5 stable and RHEL6-testing kernels available. I actually just committed new ebuilds for both. You will need true Funtoo Linux install (funtoo unstable/current recommended) to use them, though, because we have a different udev than Gentoo.

sys-kernel/rhel5-openvz-sources has the latest RHEL5 sources. Use with udev-146-r3 and it works. There are (not yet 100% updated) instructions on our wiki on how to do the downgrade easily. - Also, this ebuild automatically installs gcc-4.1.2 and uses it to build, so it is using the recommended GCC version for this kernel.

sys-kernel/rhel6-openvz-sources has the lastest RHEL6-testing sources.

Both ebuilds can be built with the "binary" USE flag which will ALSO install a standard binary kernel built using genkernel with the recommended OpenVZ kernel config.

I have also added several fixes and improvements (Funtoo compatibility) to our version of vzctl.

If you are an OpenVZ fan, I'd welcome you to try Funtoo Linux and give me your feedback because OpenVZ support in Funtoo Linux is a personal priority of mine.

Regards,

Daniel
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42732 is a reply to message #38005] Mon, 16 May 2011 23:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ales is currently offline  Ales
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2009
Senior Member
It seems obvious to me that OpenVZ team concentrates their support & development on RHEL kernels.

RHEL 6 devel kernels based on 2.6.32.x seem to be getting more mature as we speak and it's a safe bet that RHEL 6 will be supported for a long time to come. So that's the only kernel I'd use from the devel/unstable branch on an actual server. That's it.

Other devel/unstable kernels are just that - unstable and serve their purpose to test new code. I wouldn't base actual servers on them, ever. If you do, you're on your own.

I really don't see what else is there to say on this matter...
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42895 is a reply to message #38021] Wed, 15 June 2011 04:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
imatwb is currently offline  imatwb
Messages: 11
Registered: June 2011
Junior Member
I hope this is not true. I am considering using openvz in my own projects as it seems to be the most lightweight virtualization software available. There aren't really many better alternatives. Sad
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42905 is a reply to message #42732] Wed, 15 June 2011 15:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
imatwb is currently offline  imatwb
Messages: 11
Registered: June 2011
Junior Member
I've been having problems setting it up on RHEL 5 myself. It easily installed on Fedora 13 and 14 though.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42914 is a reply to message #42895] Thu, 16 June 2011 11:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ales is currently offline  Ales
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2009
Senior Member
What do you hope is not true? OpenVZ not beeing maintained?

It's maintained and actively developed. As anyone looking at the releases can see.
Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42921 is a reply to message #42905] Fri, 17 June 2011 13:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
seanfulton is currently offline  seanfulton
Messages: 105
Registered: May 2007
Senior Member
My company has many,many servers running rhel5/OVZ. It takes about a half hour to set up each new one (after installing the OS). Works great!.

If you need help, open a thread with your issues and we will try to help.

sean

Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42984 is a reply to message #38005] Fri, 24 June 2011 16:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mustardman is currently offline  mustardman
Messages: 91
Registered: October 2009
Member
I am very very impressed with OpenVZ. Very stable and scales incredibly well!

The best VM solution out there for what it does IMHO. For what I am doing nothing else even comes close. The big one for me is memory usage which is typically at a premium. On a solution like Xen the memory is reserved. So whatever the VM's have assigned to them is no longer available even if they are not using some of it.

On OpenVZ you always have access to all available memory. It doesn't sound like a big deal until you see it in action. When you have 20 VPS's on a server and each one has maybe 100MB of free memory that is 2Gig of extra memory you have to play with. Also keep in mind this is averaged over a bunch of different users. So a spike in usage at different times by different users is not going to change that availability. That means you can add a lot more VPS's for a given amount of memory than you could with other solutions.

And if you want to oversell (which I wouldn't recommend for any solution) OpenVZ just starts using the swap file.

CPU sharing appears to be very efficient as well. What I am doing involves real time applications and nobody ever complains about any jitter or delay. As long as I keep total average CPU usage below about 50% it's not a problem. And with OpenVZ's ability to divide up CPU cycles I simply set it so that no one VPS can hijack all the CPU cycles.

Anyways, I sure hope OpenVZ is able to keep a base of support. It would be a shame if it went away and forced people to use inferior solutions. I think as long as Parallels is making money OpenVZ will be ok. As far as I can tell Parallels is still committed to OpenVZ as their open source proving ground.

[Updated on: Fri, 24 June 2011 17:12]

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Re: There is great concern that OpenVZ is no longer being supported. [message #42986 is a reply to message #38005] Fri, 24 June 2011 19:31 Go to previous message
tomp is currently offline  tomp
Messages: 64
Registered: August 2007
Member
I have been using OpenVZ on CentOS 5 for the last 4 years.

It has been rock solid for the entire time period, and I have it on a variety of different hardware.

Great community, regular updates, and great features.

Long live OpenVZ. Smile
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