RHBA-2013:1560 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The spice-vdagent packages provide a SPICE agent for Linux guests.

The spice-vdagent packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.14.0, which
provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.
(BZ#951596)

Bug fixes:

• While adjusting the guest's monitor configuration, the SPICE guest agent could

fail to set the resolution when it switched to full-screen mode, which left the
guest's monitor configuration in an inconsistent state. This happened because
the agent did not handle situations when the guest's video memory was exhausted.
This update fixes the issue by reverting the guest's monitor configuration to
the previous state when the agent fails to adjust the guest monitor
configuration. (BZ#881020)

• The SPICE guest agent previously expected the guest's monitor configuration to

be always continuous, and attempted to establish and maintain connections with
display windows in ascending order (that is display 1, 2, 3, ...). The user was
thus unable to open displays out of order and choose which display would be
closed when closing a display window. The problem has been fixed by sending a
sparse monitor configuration to the agent, which allows specifying of the
display that is to be open or closed. Monitors to be disabled are configured as
0x0 sized monitors in the sparse monitor configuration. (BZ#894036)

• The user session spice-vdagent process could terminate unexpectedly when the

spice-vdagentd daemon was restarted after performing certain tasks such as
resizing the window, copying and pasting data and changing to full-screen mode.
This happened because the SPICE guest agent attempted to free already-freed
memory upon a spice-vdguestd restart. The agent now frees the memory correctly,
and the user session spice-vdagent process thus no longer crashes in this
scenario. (BZ#894365)

• The SPICE guest agent for Linux logged warning messages when using multiple

monitors per single qxl device, which is unnecessary since spice-vdagent
supports such configurations. The spice-vdagentd daemon has been modified so the
warning messages no longer occur in the log. (BZ#895004)

• When running the SPICE guest agent on the system without the virtio channel,

the agent emitted inadvertent error messages about a missing virtio device. This
update fixes this problem by removing the respective syslog() call from the code
and the error messages no longer occur in the system log in this situation.
(BZ#999804)

• When the user reconnected to a remote-viewer window after closing it while

copying a large amount of data from the client to the guest, the copy-paste
function stopped working. Furthermore, the user were unable to call the context
menu by clicking the left mouse button. This happened because the SPICE guest
agent did not release the clipboard in this situation. The agent has been
modified to properly release clipboard and the problem no longer occurs.
(BZ#1003977)

Enhancements:

• The SPICE guest agent now provides support ensuring correct translation of

end-of-line sequences when the client run on different operating system than is
the guest's operating systems (for example, when running a Windows client and a
Linux guest). (BZ#799482)

• This update adds support for setups with multiple X11 screens. Such a setup

can be achieved using multiple qxl devices where each device is mapped to a
separate screen. This setup brings the following limitations: only one monitor
can be used per X11 screen (a qxl device), all monitors must have the same
resolution, and resolution synchronization has to be done on guest machines
since no SPICE client is present. (BZ#904082)

• A new "-X" command-line option has been added to spice-vdagent, which allows

disabling the ConsoleKit framework and the systemd-logind service integration at
runtime for setups where these services are not used. (BZ#904084)

Users of spice-vdagent 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/site/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 i386
• 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 Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 799482 - RFE: copy & paste: translate end of line sequences to target OS native ones
• BZ - 881020 - Setting wrong resolution when switching to fullscreen
• BZ - 894036 - Use sparse monitor config instead of continuous
• BZ - 894365 - Spice Vdagent: RHEL 6.4 32bit guest, Service Crashes after stopping and starting the service, killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
• BZ - 895004 - warning: Client has n monitors, but only 1 qxl devices found
• BZ - 904082 - RFE: Add support for getting monitor coordinates from multiple screens
• BZ - 904084 - RFE: Make session support run time configurable
• BZ - 951596 - Rebase spice-vdagent to latest upstream
• BZ - 999804 - spice-vdagent Missing virtio device is output when login system
• BZ - 1003977 - Disconnecting during copy-paste causes copy-paste + context menu to stop working

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)