RHBA-2012:1502 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

A new spice-vdagent-win package is available.

Description

The new spice-vdagent-win package contains a service and an agent that can be
installed and run on Windows guests.

The SPICE vdagent supports multiple monitors and is responsible for
client-mouse-mode support. Previously, there were a number of issues with the
SPICE vdagent in relation to mouse operation, screen resolution and copying and
pasting large amounts of data.

This new SPICE agent package fixes these bugs:

• Stopping just the vdagent and not vdservice on a Windows 7 guest resulted in

the cursor being unusable. When connecting to a Windows 7 guest under WAN
conditions the vdagent did not restart within the allocated timeout period of 3
seconds. This prevented the guest's mouse from responding to user input. When
running a Windows guest sometimes the vdservice stopped running,causing the
mouse pointer to no longer click or accept input inside the guest. When
re-opening a SPICE session on a multi-screen guest, mouse clicks were not
synchronized with the cursor location correctly. There was also a mouse offset
when there was no exact match between the client display and the guest
resolution. (BZ#845222, BZ#750037, BZ#839564, BZ#757819, BZ#823019)

An update has been made to ensure that the vdagent starts correctly and these
problems will no longer occur. As a result the guest's mouse will now respond
correctly to user input.

• When attempting to copy and past large amounts of text from the client to the

guest, the spice-agent restarted too many times and finally stopped. This caused
the agent to crash. (BZ#815779, BZ#846427)

Updates to both the vdagent and virtio-serial driver have imposed a limit on the
amount of data able to be copied and pasted, meaning the text will not copy but
also will not crash the agent.

The new spice-vdagent-win package contains a service and an agent that can be
installed and run on Windows guests. With the new SPICE vdagent running on the
guest, these enhancements are available:

• Client mouse mode (no need to grab mouse by client, no mouse lag).
• Automatic adjustment of the guest resolution to the client resolution.
• Support for copy and paste (text and images) between the guest

and the client.

This updated package is released as part of the rhevm-guest-tools package
advisory (RHBA-2012:1504):

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2012-1504.html

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization users that are using SPICE to connect to their
virtual machines are advised to install this new SPICE vdagent in their guests.

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/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Virtualization 3.1 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 823019 - Mouse clicks are not synchronized with cursor when display is scaled up
• BZ - 839564 - vdservice stops running inside windows guests - mouse pointer cannot click
• BZ - 845222 - Cursor unusable after vdagent gets killed
• BZ - 846427 - unstable vdagent (and mouse loss) with copy-pastes larger than 1MB from the guest to the client

CVEs

(none)

References

• https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258
• https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2012-1504.html