RHBA-2013:0072 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated virt-who packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

The virt-who packages provide an agent that collects information about virtual
guests present in the system and reports them to the Red Hat Subscription
Manager tool.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, when executing the "service virt-who restart" command on a virtual

machine via the secure shell (SSH) network protocol, the security lock prevented
the service from reconnecting after the restart. Therefore, when running two
virtual machines simultaneously, restarting the first machine reported the
following message in the output of the "virt-who service status" command
executed on the second machine:

virt-who dead but pid file exists

The bug has been fixed, and the virt-who agent now handles the aforementioned
situation properly. (BZ#806226)

• Prior to this update, the virt-who agent failed to monitor the guest start

event after performing a specific set of user operations. Consequently, the
virt.uuid of the guest could not be reported. The bug has been fixed, and the
virt.uuid identifications are now provided correctly regardless of previous
operations. (BZ#812736)

• Previously, when starting the virt-who service with the "virt-who -d" command,

the background loop was created, even though the virt-who agent was not in the
background mode. With this update, the background loop is no longer accidentally
initiated in the described scenario. (BZ#848777)

• Previously, when the virt-who agent was started as a service in the

background, the debug log appeared in the shell prompt. This behavior has been
corrected, and the debug log is no longer displayed in the aforementioned case.
(BZ#848788)

• In the virt-who configuration file, setting the "VIRTWHO_INTERVAL" option to

any number enables sending a list of virtual guests to a log file automatically
at the given time interval. Due to a bug, this functionality was blocked,
therefore the log file was not updated as expected. The bug has been fixed, and
now the log file is updated as frequently as set in the "VIRTWHO_INTERVAL"
option. (BZ#849921)

• Previously, when the virt-who agent was running in debug mode, it failed to

create or recover a connection to a virtual machine. Consequently, the following
message was displayed:

ERROR: Unable to create connection

With this update, the bug has been fixed and the virt-who agent properly
connects with the debug mode enabled. (BZ#853371)

• Previously, when running the virt-who service in vdsm mode, unregistering the

system from the SAM (Red Hat Subscription Asset Manager) server caused the
service to crash with the following message:

virt-who dead but subsys locked

This bug has been fixed and virt-who now works properly in the described case.
(BZ#859841)

• Previously, when running the "service virt-who restart" command repeatedly in

very short time intervals, the command failed to stop the virt-who process, but
started a new process successfully. Consequently, many virt-who processes could
have ended up running simultaneously. This bug has been fixed, and running
"service virt-who restart" repeatedly no longer results in multiple processes
being started. (BZ#861563)

This update also adds the following enhancements:

• With this update, the virt-who agent has been modified to start as a

foreground process and to print error messages or debugging output (the "-d"
command line option) to standard error. Moreover, the following command line
options have been enhanced: the "-o" option provides the one-shot mode and exits
after sending the list of guests; the "-b" option and the "service virt-who
start" command equivalently start on the background and send data to the
/var/log/ directory. (BZ#808061)

• With this update, a man page has been added to the virt-who package. As a

result, a proper description of virt-who is provided. (BZ#848781)

All users of virt-who are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

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 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 - 806226 - virt-who dead but pid file exists
• BZ - 808061 - [RFE] virt-who command line option improvements
• BZ - 812736 - The virt-who can't report the virt.uuid when starting guest after a set of operations.
• BZ - 848777 - virt-who creates background loop even if it's not running in background mode
• BZ - 848781 - [RFE]virt-who CLI should provide "man" configure file to users.
• BZ - 848788 - Start virt-who service in BACKGROUND, the debug log should not be on terminal.
• BZ - 849921 - "VIRTWHO_INTERVAL" can't work
• BZ - 853371 - Run CLI virt-who in debug mode will report "ERROR: Unable to create connection:" and can't recover connection
• BZ - 859841 - virt-who dead but subsys locked
• BZ - 861563 - Sometimes stop virt-who failed via command "service virt-who restart" in ESX mode

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)