Synopsis

virt-v2v bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated virt-v2v packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The virt-v2v packages provide a tool for converting virtual machines to use the
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor or Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization. The tool modifies both the virtual machine image and its
associated libvirt metadata. Also, virt-v2v can configure a guest to use VirtIO
drivers if possible.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• The virt-v2v packages used to rename block devices in various guest

configuration files during conversion, including the /etc/fstab file.
Consequently, the virt-v2v utility returned a redundant warning message when a
guest's /etc/fstab file referenced to the /etc/fd0 file as the block device did
not know it. To fix this bug, warning messages concerning floppy devices have
been explicitly suppressed and virt-v2v no longer returns warning messages in
this situation. (BZ#794680)

• When reading a libvirt guest, virt-v2v uses libvirt metadata to determine the

on-disk format, considering only those of "dir", "fs", and "netfs" types as
meaningful. If a guest used a different type of storage pool, virt-v2v
interpreted these data as a format type, which was unable to convert by libvirt
guests. To address this bug, virt-v2v now only uses volume format metadata from
storage pools of type "dir", "fs", and "netfs", but also all other storage pools
can only hold raw data, so the format is assumed to be "raw". As a result,
virt-v2v can now convert libvirt guests using any supported storage pool type.
(BZ#803629)

• When creating a new libvirt guest, virt-v2v failed to disable caching for

disks as recommended. As a consequence, guests created by virt-v2v used caching
for their disks, unless explicitly disabled by the user after conversion. To
address this bug, virt-v2v now explicitly disables caching for all disks when
creating a new libvirt guest, and guests created by virt-v2v now have caching
disabled for all disks. The user can enable it again if required after
conversion. (BZ#838057)

• Virt-v2v failed when attempting to perform an on-disk format conversion when

reading a guest using the libvirtxml input method. A patch has been provided to
fix this bug and virt-v2v can now perform format conversions on guests using
libvirtxml. (BZ#868405)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• With this update, virt-v2v can do an on-disk format conversion while

converting a remote libvirt guest.
Note that when doing this kind of format conversion, virt-v2v must make an
intermediate copy of the guest storage data on the conversion server. Other
types of conversion do not require any intermediate storage on the conversion
server. The user must ensure that the TMPDIR temporary directory has sufficient
space for this intermediate copy. (BZ#682945)

Users of virt-v2v are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix
these bugs and add this enhancement.

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 - 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 - 794680 - virt-v2v prints waring:WARNING:/boot/grub/device.map references unknown device /dev/fd0
• BZ - 803629 - Convert VM with image pointing to host's partition,virt-v2v error:cannot handle volumes of format none
• BZ - 838057 - converted XML from XEN to KVM lacks cache='none' section, leading to errors when trying to live migrate
• BZ - 868073 - Convert windows guest fail
• BZ - 868129 - virt-v2v fails to convert linux guests to rhev

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)