RHBA-2017:0561 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated virtio-win package that fixes one bug and adds various enhancements is now available from the Supplementary channel of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The virtio-win package provides paravirtualized network drivers for most Microsoft Windows operating systems. Paravirtualized drivers are virtualization-aware drivers used by fully virtualized guests running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fully virtualized guests using the paravirtualized drivers gain significantly better I/O performance than fully virtualized guests running without the drivers.

This update fixes the following bug:

• If a guest virtual machine running the 64-bit Windows 7 operating system was rebooted repeatedly, it sometimes terminated unexpectedly with a blue error screen. This update fixes the race condition in the multi-path implementation that was causing the problem. As a result, 64-bit Windows 7 guests no longer encounter crashes in the described scenario. (BZ#1290305)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• This update adds support for version 1.0 of the virtio protocol to the following drivers:
• virtio-rng
• virtio-balloon
• virtio-serial
• virtio-net
• virtio-scsi
• virtio-block

Improvements in virtio 1.0 include better resource utilization and better performance. Note that if the virtual device supports virtio 1.0 as well as the older protocol (referred to as virtio 0.9.5, 0.9, or legacy), the drivers use virtio 1.0.

In addition, the virtio-win package now contains the updated Windows Server 2016 drivers in virtual floppy drive (VFD) and ISO image files, and the updated Windows 10 drivers in virtual floppy drive (VFD) files. As a result, the driver does not have to be downloaded manually.
(BZ#24104, BZ#1304973)

• The "guest-set-user-password" command has been introduced for the QEMU guest agent. This allows setting the account password for any guest user, including the root, when using QEMU and KVM. (BZ#1303906)

Users of virtio-win are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes this bug 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 Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64

Fixes

• BZ - 1290305 - Win7 64bit guest got BSOD with error 0x0000000A when reboot several times
• BZ - 1303906 - RFE: [qemu-ga] provide command for setting administrator account password (Windows guest) [rhel-6.9]
• BZ - 1304973 - virtio-win 1.7.4 doesn't provide windows 10 drivers within vfd [rhel-6.9]
• BZ - 1384587 - Backport virtio-win from RHEL-7.3 to RHEL-6.9

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)