RHBA-2013:0428 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated grub packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The GRUB utility is a powerful boot loader, which can load a wide variety of
operating systems.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• When the BIOS was set to Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) mode,

all legacy option ROMs in the setup were disabled, and the grub.efi utility was
loaded, an attempt to access the network with the NET0 protocol was not
successful and the "nd" root command did not work. This bug has been fixed and
GRUB works correctly in this situation. (BZ#783169)

• Previously, the GRUB utility did not scan for KVM virtio disks when creating a

device map. Consequently, these disks were not added to this map. This bug has
been fixed and GRUB now scans for vd* devices located in the /dev/ directory, so
virtio disks are added to a device map as expected. (BZ#814014)

• The GRUB utility did not pass high order address bits for the Extensible

Firmware Interface (EFI) memory map and system table high order bits. As a
consequence, the EFI system map and memory map did not work correctly on
computers with RAM bigger then 4 GB. This bug has been fixed by passing high
order address bits, so that grub works properly in the described scenario.
(BZ#825054)

• When symbolic links in the /dev/mapper/ directory were resolved to the

original file, this file did not match proper file entry in the device.map file.
Consequently, the grub-install package failed and an error message was returned.
With this update, symbolic links are now prevented to resolve in the
/dev/mapper/ directory. As a result, grub-install proceeds as expected.
(BZ#870420)

• Due to an error in the underlying source code, an incorrect attempt to

dereference a NULL pointer could previously cause GRUB to terminate
unexpectedly. This update corrects the underlying source code to prevent this
error so that GRUB no longer crashes. (BZ#876519)

This update also adds the following enhancements:

• This enhancement includes support for IPV6 UEFI 2.3.1 netboot, which was

previously missing. (BZ#642396)

• With this update, the users can use EFI boot partition as a root partition,

which can be specified in the grub.conf file. As a consequence, the users do not
have to specify particular drive, but can use the one specified in the EFI boot
manager. (BZ#737732)

All users of GRUB 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 Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)