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4.252. python-virtinst

An updated python-virtinst package that fixes several bugs and adds various enhancements is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The python-virtinst package provides a Python module that helps build and install libvirt-based virtual machines.
The python-virtinst package has been upgraded to upstream version 0.600.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. In particular, this update fixes the following bugs:
BZ#684786
Prior to this update, optimal cache and asynchronous I/O defaults were applied when a virtual machine was created, but not when a new device was added to an existing guest. This negatively affected the performance of such devices. With this update, the underlying source code has been corrected to apply the optimized defaults to new disks for existing guests as well.
BZ#696969
The virtinst module for Python often called the ifconfig program unnecessarily when parsing a domain XML file. Consequent to this, if a domain contained many "direct" network interfaces, the virt-manager application responded so slowly that it could not be used properly. This update removes the redundant ifconfig calls from the code, and virt-manager now works well even with a large number of "direct" network interfaces.
BZ#697798
When using the virt-install utility, an attempt to use the "--location" (or "-l") command line option to specify an ISO image file rendered the guest unable to find this image during installation. This update corrects the underlying source code to make sure such guests can now find the ISO image as expected.
BZ#698085
When the user attempted to use the virt-install utility to specify a static SELinux label, the utility failed to create correct guest configuration and the static SELinux label did not take effect for this guest. This update ensures that virt-install now generates correct configuration so that the static labels can be set as expected.
BZ#727986
When the user attempted to run the virt-install command with a mixed-case value of the "--cpu" option, the previous version of the virt-install utility failed with an error, because it automatically converted values passed on the command line to lower case. This update corrects the utility to preserve the case of command line arguments, and the "virt-install --cpu" command can now be run with a mixed-case value as expected.
BZ#742736
Due to the virt-install utility not specifying any clock policy for Windows guests, the time on the guest could skew from the time on the host. To prevent this, this update adapts the virt-install utility to specify the tickpolicy "catchup".

Enhancements

BZ#691304
A new "--disk device=cdrom" command line option is now supported by the virt-install utility. This option allows the user to specify a CD-ROM or diskette drive without inserted media.
BZ#691331
A new "--numatune" command line option is now supported by the virt-install utility. This option allows the user to specify the Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) nodes for memory pinning.
BZ#693876
The virt-install utility can now be used to create Linux container guests. This includes application containers and full OS containers. Note that no tool is provided for creating an OS directory tree and users must build this tree manually.
All users of python-virtinst are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes these bugs and adds these enhancements.