RHBA-2015:0345 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated seabios packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Description

The seabios packages contain an open-source legacy BIOS implementation which can be used as a coreboot payload. It implements the standard BIOS calling interfaces that a typical x86 proprietary BIOS implements.

The seabios packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.7.5, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#1101500)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• Under certain circumstances, SeaBIOS failed to correctly handle the order of boot devices specified in bootindex. Consequently, the boot devices could start in a different order than defined by the user. A patch has been applied to fix this problem, and specifying the order in which the boot devices start now works as expected. (BZ#1096560)
• Previously, SeaBIOS in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 filled the vendor and version fields with upstream values that differed from the ones used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. This could cause problems when guest was migrated from version 6 to 7. With this update, proper values are used, which do not change after migration. (BZ#1123299)
• Previously, the "CONFIG_VGA_ALLOCATE_EXTRA_STACK" parameter in SeaBIOS caused 16-bit applications to not work correctly. With this update, "CONFIG_VGA_ALLOCATE_EXTRA_STACK" has been removed from SeaBIOS, and 16-bit applications now work as expected. (BZ#1182634)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) now supports dynamic virtual Memory allocation and deallocation. Memory hotplugging and unplugging allows adding or removing virtual memory from a running guest in order to meet the workload demand or to maintain the service level agreement associated with the workload. This functionality also enables rapid reconfiguration of a guest once a workload has been completed or migrated, so the administrator can reconfigure the virtual machine without having to reboot it. (BZ#828571)

Users of seabios 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.

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 7 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.7 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.5 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.4 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.3 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.3 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 1035099 - "KVM internal error. Suberror: 3" when boot rhel6.5 guest with more than 42(7 AHCI controller) AHCI disks
• BZ - 1058696 - seabios can not recognize system disk with >=22 nec-usb-xhci
• BZ - 1059034 - seabios will hang when sendkey ctrl-alt-delete after seabios give info "No bootable device."
• BZ - 1067316 - win2012r2/win8 guest try boot repeadly when boot with 49 achi disk
• BZ - 1067777 - [q35] seabios can't assign more than 9 I/O address space pieces to pci bridges.
• BZ - 1096560 - fail to assign correct order for the boot device in seabios as we specified the bootindex in qemu-kvm cli(under the same virtio-scsi-pci)
• BZ - 1123299 - smbios table 0 vendor string should be Seabios (for rhel6 compatibility) [7.1+7.0.z]
• BZ - 1182634 - Remove CONFIG_VGA_ALLOCATE_EXTRA_STACK

CVEs

(none)

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#normal