RHBA-2015:0859 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated virt-who package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The virt-who package provides an agent that collects information about virtual
guests present in the system and reports them to the subscription manager.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the virt-who agent was too slow when reading the association

between hosts and guests from VMWare ESX systems. As a consequence, when
communicating with large ESX (or vCenter) deployments, it took a lot of time to
send updates about virtual guests to the Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) and
Red Hat Satellite. With this update, virt-who uses an improved method to obtain
host-guest association, which accelerates the aforementioned process.
(BZ#1197596)

• Prior to this update, the virt-who agent was not able to decrypt a password

that was encrypted by the virt-who-password utility. As a consequence, virt-who
could not authenticate against the remote virtualization server. With this
update, virt-who is able to decrypt the encrypted password correctly, and thus
connects to the virtualization server properly. (BZ#1197597)

• Prior to this update, the virt-who agent ignored the HTTP proxy configuration

in the ESX virtualization back end. As a consequence, virt-who did not use the
proxy server when connecting to the ESX server, and the connection could fail.
With this update, virt-who uses the http_proxy environment variable in ESX mode,
thus fixing this bug. (BZ#1201157)

• Previously, virt-who used the value of the "--esx-server" command-line option

instead of the "--satellite-server" option value. As a consequence, virt-who
attempted to report a host-guest association to the ESX server instead of
satellite, and thus failed. With this update, "--satellite-server" works as
intended, and virt-who uses the correct server when connecting to Red Hat
Satellite. (BZ#1205520)

Users of virt-who are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
these bugs.

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 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 6.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 6.6 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 IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 6.6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 6.6 ppc64
• 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
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support from RHUI 6.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support from RHUI 6.6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 6.6 x86_64
• 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 EUS Compute Node 6.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 6.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 1197596 - virt-who performance issue for large ESX installation
• BZ - 1205520 - virt-who uses wrong server when connecting to satellite

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)