changelog for updates not always supplied

[Kodey]

When deciding to apply an update it's very helpful to see the changelog, especially when a reboot or restarting a service is involved.
Often, particularly with pve kernel changes, a changelog isn't available and specific changes are difficult and time consuming to locate.
This kind of process is normally well suited for automation during the release process.

Can these changelogs be supplied?
Is there any specific difficulties involved in supplying these for Proxmox?

 

[nunner]

Hi,

what repositories are you using? Changelogs are supplied with new releases, and you should also be able to view them using apt changelog foo. Otherwise, you can access them through the git repositories themselves, usually located at debian/changelog in the tree. Here's the kernel [1] as an example.

[1] https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-kernel.git;a=blob;f=debian/changelog

 

[Kodey]

what repositories are you using?

no-subscription repos:

Changelogs are supplied with new releases, and you should also be able to view them using apt changelog foo.

Actually not:

# apt changelog zfs-initramfs
E: Failed to fetch changelog:/zfs-linux.changelog  Changelog unavailable for zfs-linux=2.1.7-pve1
# apt changelog spl
E: Failed to fetch changelog:/zfs-linux.changelog  Changelog unavailable for zfs-linux=2.1.7-pve1
# apt changelog pve-kernel-5.15
E: Failed to fetch changelog:/pve-kernel-5.15.changelog  Changelog unavailable for pve-kernel-5.15=7.3-1
# apt changelog pve-firmware
E: Failed to fetch changelog:/pve-firmware.changelog  Changelog unavailable for pve-firmware=3.6-2

Otherwise, you can access them through the git repositories themselves, usually located at debian/changelog in the tree.

I'm interested in Proxmox pve update changes so I know what systems are affected, particularly if they require a reboot. How do I find those?
eg: pve-firmware-3.6-1 pve-firmware-3.6-2

 

[Kodey]

This would be particularly useful for pve-kernel update

 

[nunner]

After looking into this a bit deeper: due to way that our repositories are structured right now, you can only get changelogs for package versions that are currently installed. apt tries to look for the changelog for the newest version that it knows of, which might not always be the one installed. In this case, you get the error that you have been encountering.

As for the GUI: this should work in any case, since it can download the changelog directly from the server. What seems to be happening is that the API for fetching the changelogs is struggling when both the PBS and the PVE repositories are configured, I've filed a corresponding bug report [1]. Something that seemingly fixed the issue while I was doing some testing is to configure the PVE repositories *before* the PBS repositories (so, changing their order in the config file).

[1] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4481

 

[Kodey]

The patch didn't work for me.
I tried adding pbs to my $data array, but that didn't help

Disabling the pbs source fixes it, but I don't know if pbs updates will be missed so I had to re-enable it.
/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ mv pbs-no-subscription.list pbs-no-subscription.list.disabled

 

[nunner]

How exactly did you apply the patch? Works on my end, did you run systemctl restart pveproxy.service pvedaemon.service afterwards?

 

[Kodey]

systemctl restart pveproxy.service pvedaemon.service

That fixed it. I haven't tested any pbs updates yet though

 

[nunner]

FYI, the patch was (albeit slightly modified [1]) merged into pve-manager and should be available from pve-manager 7.3-5 once it releases.

[1] https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-manager.git;a=commit;h=7fe2cecadc2bd16e8655b52c65608145da3292ba