RHBA-2009:1285 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated virt-manager package that fixes several bugs and adds
enhancements is now available.

Description

The Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) package provides a graphical
tool for administering virtualized guests running on the Xen and KVM
hypervisors. The virt-manager application uses the libvirt API to manage
virtualized guests and hypervisors.

Bugs fixed in the updated virt-manager package include:

• Fully virtualized guests created with virt-manager are sometimes affected

by a bug that prevents the mouse from moving freely throughout the screen.
To work around this issue configure a USB tablet device for the guest with
virt-manager. (BZ#223805)

• The virt-manager help documentation was out-of-date and broken.

Presently, the documentation has been removed from the virt-manager to
address the various issue and the 'help' buttons and menu items have been
removed. Updated documentation is in development and may be available with
future releases. (BZ#448716, BZ#443628, BZ#460713)

• Running virt-manager in unprivileged mode listed guests twice when

connecting to remote hosts. If the remote host was disconnected and
reconnected the list would double again. Every guest entry, including the
duplicate entries could activate the guest. This issue is now resolved and
only the available guests will be listed for a remote host. (BZ#448885)

• virt-manager would hang when attempting to connect to a Xen hypervisor

with SSH. The updated virt-manager package has enhanced remote connection
awareness and this issue no longer presents. (BZ#484063)

• Adding or removing a device during the guest installation procedure

sometimes caused the guest to become unbootable. This behavior has been
fixed in the updated package and devices can be added or removed during the
installation. (BZ#472600)

• Changing memory allocation for running guests in virt-manager had no

effect. This issue is resolved in the updated package and memory changes
update correctly. (BZ#484314)

• Migrations with the virt-manager Migrate option failed due to incorrect

parameters being sent to libvirt. The correct parameters are sent in the
updated package. (BZ#509135)

This updated virt-manager package provides the following enhancements:

• virt-manager has been rebased to support the KVM hypervisor. (BZ#489374)
• Users can now add a sound for virtualized guests on the KVM hypervisor.

Sound cards are optional for virtualized guests. The only available and
default sound card device is an emulated AC97 device. (BZ#506035)

• the updated virt-manager package includes a storage management interface.

Access the storage management interface by selecting the
Edit->Host Details->Storage menu. The storage management interface manages
local and networked storage devices.

• Graphical guest consoles support resizing and scaling.
• Users can view and remove virtualized sound, serial, parallel, and host

devices from virtualized guests.

• Users can add sound cards and host devices to existing virtualized

guests.

• The disk and network device model can be selected when adding new

device to a virtualized guest.

• The default boot device for a virtualized guest can be selected in

virt-manager. (BZ#484068)

• VTd and PCI passthrough are now supported. The VT-d feature provides

hardware support for directly assigning physical PCI devices to a guest.
The main benefit of the feature is to improve the performance of guest I/O
to bare-metal levels for assigned PCI devices. Supported architectures for
VTd include: 32 bit x86, 64-bit Intel EM64T and 64-bit Intel Itanium 2.
(BZ#480521)

Users of virt-manager are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
provide these bug fixes and enhancements.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 223805 - Mouse pointer hits an 'invisible wall'
• BZ - 443628 - [documentation/virt-mananger] - code refers to documentation section "virt-manager-network", which is non-existent
• BZ - 448716 - help doesn't show when running VM in privileged mode and without --no-fork
• BZ - 448885 - virt-manager UI not updated on disconnect/connect to remote host
• BZ - 460713 - virt-manager Help Contents references New Machine button under File menu that does not exist.
• BZ - 472600 - virt-manager doesn't update the inactive guest config
• BZ - 484063 - virt-manager hanged when creating a new vm through xen+ssh to localhost
• BZ - 484068 - Could not boot from CDROM
• BZ - 484314 - virt-manager produces backtrace when setting domain memory
• BZ - 492591 - virt-manager man page cruft
• BZ - 506035 - Want ac97 sound, and want it by default
• BZ - 507207 - The network installation method is disabled under xen FV, but it still can be selected.
• BZ - 507325 - Input the command "virt-manager -help" in the terminal.There will be a error message
• BZ - 507437 - virt-manager does not find a default connection to kvm/qemu
• BZ - 508249 - Prompt unsuitable after saving a virtual machine screenshot
• BZ - 508751 - Don't setup a sound card by default in virt-manager
• BZ - 509135 - virt-manager not transmitting a good uri to libvirt on migration

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)