RHBA-2013:0374 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated virt-who packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are
now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

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 running the virt-who service, unregistering a Red Hat

Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor host from the Subscription Asset Manager
(SAM) server caused the service to be terminated with the following message:

SubscriptionManagerError: No such file or directory
Error in communication with candlepin, trying to recover
Unable to read certificate, system is not registered or you are not root

Only the last line of the aforementioned message should have been displayed.
This bug has been fixed, and the traceback errors are now saved to the log file
and not printed on the screen. (BZ#825215)

• When a snapshot of a virtual machine (VM) was created in Microsoft Hyper-V

Server, the virt-who agent replaced the UUID of the VM file with the UUID of the
snapshot. This bug has been fixed, and the UUID is not changed in the described
case. Additionally, in certain cases, the virt-who agent running with the
"--hyperv" command-line option terminated with the following message:

AttributeError: HyperV instance has no attribute 'ping'

This bug has been fixed and the aforementioned error no longer occurs.
(BZ#866890)

• Previously, the virt-who agent failed to function correctly when a URL, which

was set in the VIRTWHO_ESX_SERVER parameter, was missing the initial "https://"
string. With this update, virt-who has been modified, and "https://" is no
longer required in VIRTWHO_ESX_SERVER. (BZ#869960)

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 the standard error output. 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#808060)

• The virt-who agent has been modified to support Red Hat Enterprise

Virtualization Manager polling. (BZ#846788)

• With this update, the virt-who agent has been modified to correctly recognize

guest virtual machines, which are installed on top of Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
(BZ#860854)

• The virt-who manual pages and the output of the "virt-who --help" command have

been enhanced with clarifying information. In addition, a typographical error
has been corrected in both texts. (BZ#868149)

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 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 808060 - [RFE] virt-who command line option improvements
• BZ - 825215 - Subscription-manager unregister error : SubscriptionManagerError: No such file or directory(on rhevh)
• BZ - 846788 - [RFE] Support for virt-who polling against RHEVM directly
• BZ - 866890 - virt-who support Hyper-V problems
• BZ - 868149 - There are some suggestions in man config file and help info.
• BZ - 869960 - virt-who cannot work in ESX mode if setting the parameter VIRTWHO_ESX_SERVER without "https://"

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)