RHBA-2011:1680 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated seabios package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The seabios package contains a legacy BIOS implementation which can be used as a
coreboot payload.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the smp_mtrr array was not large enough to hold all 31 entries of

model-specific registers (MSRs) with current qemu-kvm implementations. As a
consequence, installation of a Windows Server 2008 32-bit guest failed when more
than one virtual CPU was allocated in it. With this update, the size of the
smp_mtrr array has been increased to 32 and now Windows Server 2008 guests
install successfully in the described scenario. (BZ#727328)

• On reboot, reinitialization of the USB HID (Human Interface Device) devices

was not done before seabios was setting up timers. Consequently, when the
"shutdown -r now" command was executed in a guest, the guest became
unresponsive, could not be rebooted, and the "usb-kbd: warning: key event queue
full" error message was returned. A patch has been provided to address this
issue and the guest now reboots properly in the described scenario. (BZ#733028)

• Previously, seabios only supported address space up to 40 bits per one

address. As a consequence, guests with 1 TB of RAM could not boot. A patch has
been provided to address this issue, which raises the memory space limit up to
48 bits, thus supporting up to 281 TB of virtual memory in a guest. (BZ#630975)

• Previously, the S3/S4 power state capability was advertised in the DSDT

(Differentiated System Description Table) tables. This could have caused various
power management issues. With this update, the S3/S4 capability has been removed
from the DSDT tables, thus fixing this bug. (BZ#736522)

• Previosly, Windows guests failed to generate memory dumps on NMIs

(Non-Maskable Interrupts), even if they were properly configured to. With this
update, a NMI descriptor has been added to seabios, and Windows guests now
generate memory dumps on NMIs correctly. (BZ#750191)

All users of seabios are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
these bugs.

Solution

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

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

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 630975 - KVM guest limited to 40bit of physical address space
• BZ - 733028 - Failed to reboot guest due to "key event queue full"
• BZ - 750191 - Wrong LINT1/NMI ACPI and mptable descriptors

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)