[pve-devel] Kernel 5.6/5.7 in Proxmox (Or - what is the lead-time for kernels to ship in Proxmox).

[Victor Hooi]

Hi,

It seems there's there's were performance improvements and bugfixes for AMD
EPYC in Linux 5.4:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.4-Improve-EPYC-Balance
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-EPYC-Linux-5.4-Early
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.0-5.4-EPYC-7642

More recently, they updated k10temp to support temperature/voltage/CCD
temperature reporting for AMD chips:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200116141800.9828-1-linux@roeck-us.net/
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Ryzen-k10temp-CCD-V-Current
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.6-HWMON-Changes

This has landed as part of Kernel 5.6 (just released):

https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.6
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-56-features&num=1
<https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.6-HWMON-Changes>
So the plan is that Proxmox 6.2 (2020 Q2) will ship with Kernel 5.4, right?

But 5.4 won't be updated for 1-2 years after that? Would pve-test have
newer kernels, if we were willing to put up with some rough edges?

Do you know if the k10temp patches can be backported?

Thanks,
Victor

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 7:02 PM Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht at proxmox.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 3/25/20 12:15 AM, Victor Hooi wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm running Proxmox on a AMD Rome box - keen to do some testing on more
> > recent kernel builds, due to the performance improvements and better
> > power/temperature monitoring.
> >
> > Proxmox is currently on kernel 5.4 - curious when the 5.6 kernel
> (released)
> > might land?
>
> 5.4 is currently still rather for testing, even if it runs very well:
> https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/linux-kernel-5-4-for-proxmox-ve.66854/
>
> >
> > And what sort of lead-time would we be looking at for say, 5.7 (or
> kernels
> > in general) to his Proxmox?
>
> The 5.4 kernel will remain during the remaining releases cycle of Proxmox
> VE
> 6.X - so about the next two years.
> Due to it being a upstream LTS and a Ubuntu LTS kernel, some HW support
> should
> be back ported just fine.
>
> The idea of a opt-in newer kernel (e.g., without ZFS, as this often needs a
> bit time to release an adapted to recent kernels version) is a idea I
> personally like from just the idea. But that would double the effort
> required
> for the kernel release work - so for now we won't do that.
>
> A newer, official supported, kernel may then land in one to two years, with
> the 7.0 beta (really guessing, currently nobody knows what the future
> holds).
>
> If you have specific problems and even know the fix required, we and
> upstream
> will always try to backport this to the stable LTS kernel, at least if it
> isn't
> an invasive fix.
>
> cheers,
> Thomas
>
>