Confused about the multitude of XenServer 6.0.2 hotfixes and associated drivers currently available? The public hotfixes and drivers are listed here and as of April 2013 totals 88!  It’s not as daunting as it looks though – there are currently 21 hotfixes, the remainder are the drivers associated with various versions of hotfixes.  And of the 21 hotfixes a number of the older ones are superceded and included with newer hotfixes, but there are some dependencies so they need to be installed in the correct order.

Firstly, download the required hotfixes.  As mentioned we don’t need all 21 – so download the following 5 hotfixes (that’s 16 less reboots to do!)

Hotfix 6 CTX134130
Hotfix 10 CTX135225
Hotfix 19 (includes hotfixes 1 and 2) CTX137134
Hotfix 20 (includes hotfixes 4, 8, 14, 16, 18) CTX136478
Hotfix 21 (includes hotfixes 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13) CTX136479

Hotfix 21 links to an article (CTX136621) listing the various upgraded drivers to go with it.  To work out the drivers you need, fire up a XenServer command line via the physical console, XenCenter or SSH.  Enter the “lsmod” command to return all running modules and drivers, or combine it with the egrep command to narrow the search down.  Eg the driver page shows the modules that require updating as per below graphic (this is not the complete list, cropped for brevity):

So to search for these drivers, issue the command as follows:

[root@XenHost ~]# lsmod | egrep 'bnx2x|bnx2|tg3|cxgb3|cxgb4'

Any lines that get returned indicate the drivers that are installed and need updating.  If no lines get returned, you have no drivers that need updating :)

Now we are prepared, install the hotfixes in the following order:

1 – Hotfix 6
2 – Hotfix 10
3 – Hotfix 20
4 – Hotfix 19
5 – Hotfix 21
6 – Drivers (if required)

Time and enthusiasm permitting, I’ll attempt to keep this post updated as future hotfixes get released – happy patching!