Re: [PATCH] Remove Ubuntu 18.04 support from the repository

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 11:14:45AM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:15 PM Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On 11/05/2022 13.13, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:03 PM Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> > >> On 11/05/2022 12.46, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> > >>>    On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 11:30 AM Daniel P. Berrangé
> > >>> <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
> > >>>> On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 09:56:12PM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> > >>>>> According to our "Supported build platforms" policy, we now do not 
> > >>>>> support
> > >>>>> Ubuntu 18.04 anymore. Remove the related files and entries from our 
> > >>>>> CI.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
> > >>>>> ---
> > >>>>>    Seems like nobody touched the 18.04-based tests/vm/ubuntu* files 
> > >>>>> in a
> > >>>>>    very long time, so I assume these are not used anymore and can 
> > >>>>> completely
> > >>>>>    be removed now.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Or it could mean that they are working fine and so haven't needed
> > >>>> changes...
> > >>>
> > >>> Yes :)
> > >>
> > >> At least for me "make vm-build-ubuntu.aarch64" is only failing with ssh
> > >> timeouts (on my x86 laptop) ... is this really supposed to work with 
> > >> TCG, or
> > >> is this KVM (on arm hosts) only?
> > >
> > > Yes this timeout code is not working. I suppose it is tied to the TCG 
> > > host perf.
> > > I suggested a pair of patches to increase it but back then Fam didn't 
> > > accepted
> > > them because IIRC these VMs were used by patchew (previous to Gitlab).
> > > Today we have better framework for testing, so I wouldn't use this script 
> > > on
> > > CI, but it is still valuable for manual testing.
> > >
> > > Robert's email doesn't work anymore. Since I don't have x86 workstation
> > > anymore, I'll probably use these tests/vm for testing. So let me add a
> > > "upgrade tests/vm/ubuntu to 22.04" to my TODO list. If I fail and nobody
> > > miss them, then I won't object to remove them.
> 
> So, 18.04 is the latest LTS release for 32-bit x86 (i386).
> 
> IIRC we used this 32-bit VM to reproduce bugs only triggered on 32-bit hosts
> (while it seems obvious, what is not obvious is that very few developers run
> on 32-bit hosts, so I'm not sure how long we are interested in avoiding bugs
> there). See i.e.:
> https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/07a865e0-d535-9a19-cf29-f90984bcd510@amsat.org/

At some point we'll need to just admit 32-bit host is dead, and that
point is getting ever closer. For now though, if we need a VM for
32-bit testing, the easiest answer is probably to tweak the VM config to
be Debian based, as that's functionally closest to what Ubuntu provides
and so likely not too much work.

With regards,
Daniel
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