8/12/20 Patch Releases

[davidnuzik]

Bump to the new upstream patches and release.

Summary:
Task covering 8/12 Patch releases work.

List of required releases:
To release as soon as able:
v1.16.14-rc1+k3s1 (just for typical testing)
v1.17.11-rc1+k3s1 (RC needed for KDM testing in Rancher)
v1.18.8-rc1+k3s1 (RC needed for KDM testing in Rancher)

To release once have approval from QA:
v1.16.14+k3s1
v1.17.11+k3s1
v1.18.8+k3s1

Prep work:

• EIO team notified of 8/12 releases
• PM and QA review changes and understand testing efforts
• Prep PR for rancher/k3s (update stable channel) PR Mark v1.18.7+k3s1 as stable #2117
• FORK rancher/kontainer-driver-metadata (and bump v1.17 and v1.18 RC versions for QA to test KDM) data.json
• Prep PR for rancher/kontainer-driver-metadata (bump v1.17 and v1.18 release versions) K3S - Update k3s v1.17 and v1.18 versions rancher/kontainer-driver-metadata#342 and [dev-v2.4] Update k3s v1.17 and v1.18 versions rancher/kontainer-driver-metadata#343
• PM Draft Releases (fill in release notes, mark as pre-release, fill in title, set target release branch, leave tag version blank, save as draft)

Vendor and release work:

• Vendor in new patch versions into the appropriate branches and release rancher/kubernetes
• PM needs to provide release notes
• Merge PR for rancher/kontainer-driver-metadata into the dev branches
• Tag and release any necessary RCs for QA to test KDM
• Tag and release the K3s patches

Post-Release work:

• Merge in channel server change (to mark v1.18.8+k3s1 as stable)
• Merge in rancher/kontainter-driver-metadata change to release branch (so new v1.17 and v1.18 patch versions are shown in Rancher UI)

[davidnuzik]

We've decided to NOT fix the arm64 airgap problem today. Here is why: the images that we would need to repush are also used by RKE. To safely ensure we dont break production, we need to have a more methodical and thorough approach that encompasses testing both RKE and K3s.

Please refer to #1285 (comment) which talks about this in more detail. That issue is being used to track the airgap image issue with ARM and AMR64.

[davidnuzik]

Note, due to a late start in upstream k8s releases and v1.16 lagging behind (still not started) we will likely pick this up tomorrow and plan to release by 8/13 end of day.

FYI upstream release issues:
v1.16.14: kubernetes/sig-release#1179
v1.17.10: kubernetes/sig-release#1180
v1.17.11: kubernetes/sig-release#1183
v1.18.7: kubernetes/sig-release#1181
v1.18.8: kubernetes/sig-release#1182

All upstream patches are ready and we are working on the release process for K3S

[davidnuzik]

Updated my comment above to point to new v1.17 and v1.18 release issues.
There were technical issues with getting upstream v1.17.10 and v1.18.7 out. As such, the sig-release team has made a call to just tag new versions for v1.17 and v1.18. We'll instead be releasing with v1.17.11 and v1.18.8

[davidnuzik]

All release efforts done including QA checks!
This issue will stay open for a while as we assess the state of the patch releases from the community. When we are comfortable, we'll mark v1.18.8+k3s1 as stable in the channel server for K3s.

[davidnuzik]

v1.18.8+k3s1 is now marked as stable. https://update.k3s.io/v1-release/channels was successfully updated.
Brief check on amd64 machine curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh - was successful - v1.18.8 was pulled and installed.