RHBA-2015:1377 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated virt-who package that fixes several bugs and adds various enhancements
is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

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

The virt-who package has been upgraded to upstream version 0.12, which provides
a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#1195585)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• 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#1199397)

• The virt-who service 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#1155679)

• The virt-who service 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#1192942)

• Because certain versions of the VMWare ESX hypervisor do not support the

RetrieveProperties method, virt-who failed when obtaining information from the
ESX hypervisor. With this update, virt-who no longer uses the RetrieveProperties
method and instead works asynchronously, using the WaitForUpdatesEx method. As a
result, virt-who is now able to reliable obtain information from the ESX
hypervisor. (BZ#1169006)

• Logging in to a Red Hat Satellite 5 server with virt-who previously failed

with an "incomplete format" error. With this update, virt-who uses correct
credentials for connecting to Satellite 5 servers, and the login now works.
(BZ#1167451)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• The virt-who service is now capable of filtering which virtualization cluster

or clusters it will report. This allows users to automatically filter out
clusters that do not contain any Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests, and not to
display these redundant clusters. (BZ#1192217)

• With this update, virt-who allows filtering which hosts are reported to the

Subscription Manager. As a result, users can now choose for virt-who not to
display hosts with specified parameters, such as hosts that do not run any Red
Hat Enterprise Linux guests. (BZ#1184665)

• The virt-who service can now report the association between hosts and guests

when offline, and thus no longer requires connection to the hypervisor to
perform this operation. When virt-who cannot be connected to the hypervisor, for
instance due to a security policy, users can now obtain information about the
host-guest mapping file by using the "virt-who --print" command, which loads the
information from the mapping file, and imports it to the Subscription Manager.
(BZ#1173018)

• The support for encrypted passwords has been added to virt-who. Previously,

any user with read privileges to the virt-who configuration file was able to
read the passwords to external services stored in the configuration file as
plain text. This update introduces the virt-who-password utility, which allows
encrypting passwords stored in the virt-who configuration file. Note that the
root user can still decrypt the encrypted passwords. (BZ#1154877)

Users of virt-who are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
these bugs and adds 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 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 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 Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 1135408 - Can't display the running mode in the virt-who log
• BZ - 1142884 - virt-who can't report libvirt guests's attributes and state
• BZ - 1154877 - [RFE] virt-who security
• BZ - 1155679 - virt-who performance issue for large ESX installation
• BZ - 1167451 - virt-who using wrong username and password for Satellite login
• BZ - 1167943 - virt-who-0.10-8.el6 traceback when reporting between RHEV-M and 5 series satellite
• BZ - 1169006 - virt-who Method not found: 'VimService.VimPort.RetrieveProperties
• BZ - 1173018 - RFE : virt-who in offline mode
• BZ - 1184665 - RFE: allow filtering which hosts are sent by virt-who
• BZ - 1188568 - virt-who requires --*-env and --*-owner to be set even for satellite 5
• BZ - 1192217 - [RFE] Provide a means for virt-who to query only specific virtualization clusters
• BZ - 1195585 - virt-who rebase
• BZ - 1197970 - [RFE] Please register the vmware hosts using host-names and not UUID in the Satellite 6.
• BZ - 1199397 - virt-who uses wrong server when connecting to satellite
• BZ - 1207971 - "AttributeError: 'VirtWho' object has no attribute 'warn'"
• BZ - 1207997 - stop virt-who service can't kill all virt-who process
• BZ - 1208020 - virt-who still send host/guest mapping to satellite server after unregistered to it.
• BZ - 1208029 - virt-who crashes when ecryption key doesn't exist
• BZ - 1208345 - virt-who work abnormally after restart vcenter
• BZ - 1208391 - Register/Unregister to SAM will result in virt-who die
• BZ - 1209970 - [RFE] Virtwho error messages shouldn't appear in rhsm log
• BZ - 1210209 - Can't run "virt-who --help" when virt-who is running
• BZ - 1212334 - virt-who show "AttributeError: PropertyChange instance has no attribute 'val'" during adding esx
• BZ - 1212688 - "Starting virt-who: [OK] "when failed to start virt-who service
• BZ - 1214117 - virt-who shouldn't filter out all hosts when filter_host_uuids is null
• BZ - 1214606 - virt-who --print can't show esx host/guest mapping info
• BZ - 1215007 - virt-who can't support multi-mode/multi-server when it run at offline mode
• BZ - 1216293 - virt-who can't monitor guest's updating instantly when it run at remote libvirt/esx/rhevm mode
• BZ - 1216890 - Redundant character "u'" in the log when virt-who run at fake mode
• BZ - 1218476 - virt-who generate redundant threads when virt-who run at multi mode at the first time
• BZ - 1218843 - virt-who failed to send host/guest info to Server when ESXi have no host at all
• BZ - 1220658 - "virt-who -o -d " can't get host/guest mapping when run at vdsm/rhevm mode
• BZ - 1221027 - virt-who crashes when ecryption key doesn't exist
• BZ - 1221082 - virt-who generate "AttributeError:" when add rhel host
• BZ - 1223647 - host/guest reailtime mapping info can't show on rhsm.log after virt-who's log size up to 1M
• BZ - 1224020 - Stop the virt-who process by Ctrl+C failed

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)