RHBA-2013:0529 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments (SPICE) is a remote
display protocol for virtual environments. SPICE users can access a virtualized
desktop or server from the local system or any system with network access to the
server. SPICE is used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for viewing virtualized guests
running on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor or on Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisors.

The spice-server package has been upgraded to upstream version 0.12.0, which
provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.
(BZ#842353)

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, when the "-spice" command line option of the qemu-kvm command

contained invalid parameters, the SPICE server terminated unexpectedly. This
behavior has been modified, and SPICE server now returns a proper error value
when incorrect parameters are passed. (BZ#787694)

• Previously, resolution changes run in a loop on a guest virtual machine led

the qemu-kvm process to fail with the SIGABRT signal. This was caused by calling
the ring _remove() function twice by the red_worker script. This bug has been
fixed, and qemu-kvm no longer crashes in the described case. (BZ#824384)

• Previously, non-RGB images with masks were omitted when rendering the guest

user interface with the spice-server package. Consequently, certain icons were
rendered incorrectly. This bug has been fixed, and the rendering errors no
longer occur. (BZ#864982)

• Using the LZ compression for server self-created images resulted in incorrect

stride values, which caused SPICE server to abort. With this update, the LZ
compression is no longer used for these images to prevent SPICE server
termination. (BZ#876685)

• Previously, messages from a client to the spice-vdagent agent were received by

SPICE server, even after the agent had already disconnected from the server.
These messages were mishandled and in certain circumstances could cause SPICE
server to terminate unexpectedly. Now, these messages are dropped by the server,
thus preventing this bug. (BZ#881980)

• When trying to change the settings of the "3D Flying Objects" screen saver,

SPICE server was forced to access already freed pointers. Consequently, SPICE
server terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, the
sequence of operations has been reordered to prevent the segmentation fault.
(BZ#891326)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• With this update, a seamless migration of the SPICE server has been enabled to

ensure the full data transfer. This change required modifications in the QUEMU
emulator and the libvirt library. The "seamless-migration=on" argument has been
added to SPICE's QUEMU arguments. In case this argument is not set, SPICE
returns to the old migration pathway. (BZ#836123)

• This update adds support for multiple monitors and arbitrary screen

resolutions. (BZ#842310)

All users of spice-server 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 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
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 787694 - fail gracefully (catch exceptions instead of abort) when invalid -spice command-line options are set
• BZ - 824384 - Resolution changes in loop on guest results in Sigabrt
• BZ - 836123 - RFE: seamless migration
• BZ - 842310 - RFE: spice-server: support multiple monitors and arbitrary resolutions via monitors-config
• BZ - 842353 - Rebase spice-server to latest upstream
• BZ - 862352 - Seamless migration: Assert raised when rebooting during migration
• BZ - 864982 - Alpha transparency doesn't work well with spice-server 0.12 in some circumstances
• BZ - 866929 - seamless migration: assert at destination side after migration
• BZ - 867405 - core dump when starting qemu with spice and -S
• BZ - 868807 - Qemu aborted when change the resolution of guest from 1024x768 to 2560x1600
• BZ - 876685 - Spice server aborts when spice client is connected
• BZ - 878700 - Segmentation fault when do live migration with remote-viewer + usb-redir (seamless-migration=on)
• BZ - 880276 - qemu segfaults in red_worker thread when called with -spice and any other -vga value than qxl
• BZ - 881980 - agent disconnection while agent data is sent to it from the client, can result in client disconnection or server crash
• BZ - 891326 - spice-server crash when trying on guest (XP) to change settings of "3D Flying Objects" screen-saver

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)