RHBA-2015:1297 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The anaconda packages contain portions of the Anaconda installation program that
can be run by the user for reconfiguration and advanced installation options.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• On the custom storage screen, selecting mountpoint and format as EFI System

Partition caused the following error message to be displayed:

You have not created a /boot/efi partition.

This update modifies the way boot devices are looked up. As a result, an
acceptable boot device is located and no error is reported in the described
situation. (BZ#1145812)

• The Anaconda installer set the "boot" flag on the PowerPC Reference Platform

(PReP) partition when using GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks. Consequently, the
GUID of the partition changed to the EFI System Partition instead of PReP. Now,
when using GPT disks, the boot flag is only set on boot partitions that are
formatted as EFI partitions, and the PReP partition GUID is no longer replaced
with the ESP GUID. (BZ#1139606)

• The LVM physical volume (PV) and volume group (VG) size was sometimes smaller

than expected. Consequently, Anaconda sometimes tried to create a logical volume
(LV) that was larger than the available space in the VG. Now, Anaconda verifies
the amount of available space when creating a LV and if the request is too
large, only the available space is used. Also, a warning message is included in
the storage.log file. (BZ#1153376)

• Under specific circumstances, if a device lookup by name failed, the function

failed instead of gracefully returning "no such device". As a consequence,
Anaconda terminated unexpectedly. With this update, if a device lookup by name
fails, it is treated as if nothing was found instead of an error. (BZ#1129499)

• Previously, Anaconda forced the vesa driver after the Linux framebuffer

(fbdev). As a consquence, the X server could terminate unexpectedly while
booting. Now, Anaconda no longer crashes. (BZ#1083586)

• Some servers use network cards that take a very long time to initialize since

the link is reported as being available. Consequently, the download of the
kickstart file failed. This update re-adds support for the "nicdelay" installer
boot option by using NetworkManager's feature of checking the gateway with a
ping before the device is reported as connected. As a result, for servers with
network cards taking a very long time to initialize, the "nicdelay" boot option
can be used to prevent kickstart download from failing. (BZ#979163)

• When starting the VNC server, Anaconda always passed the "-nevershared"

option, and Anaconda only allowed one VNC connection. This update removes the
"-nevershared" option. The user has to use the "-shared" option from their VNC
client to connect to a shared connection. (BZ#1168024)

• The Anaconda installer searched for prepboot disks with a preference for those

on the same disk as /boot. If a user deleted all partitions including /boot, the
object would be a NoneType. Consequently, Anaconda terminated unexpectedly. This
update adds a guard to perform a safe default in the described situation.
(BZ#1021445)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• On IBM System z, if LDL-formatted Direct Access Storage Devices (DASDs) are

detected, the Anaconda installer now displays a warning dialog that explains the
problem and presents a list of the detected Linux Disk Layout (LDL) DASDs with
an option to format them as Compatible Disk Layout (CDL). Before, although LDL
DASDs were recognized by the kernel, they were not officially supported in the
installer. The user can now choose whether or not to format the detected LDL
DASDs as CDL. (BZ#1144979)

• This update adds support for LVM Thin Provisioning as a device type within the

Anaconda installer and kickstart configuration. (BZ#1083459)

Users of anaconda 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 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• 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 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 Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• 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 (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 995531 - When installing via kickstart with encrypted sha512 rootpw line, Anaconda ignores the password and prompts for root password to be set
• BZ - 1168024 - [Feature Request] Allow simultaneous client connections for VNC
• BZ - 1205286 - Move translations to Zanata
• BZ - 1225469 - KeyError: 'rah-docker-pool'

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)