- Issued:
- 2010-03-18
- Updated:
- 2010-03-18
RHEA-2010:0157 - Product Enhancement Advisory
Synopsis
Virtio drivers for kernel 2.4.21-63.EL
Type/Severity
Product Enhancement Advisory
Topic
This new package provides signed, para-virtualized block and network
drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 as a KVM virtualized guest.
Description
Para-virtualized drivers are virtualization-aware drivers used by fully
virtualized guests running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fully-virtualized
guests using the para-virtualized drivers gain significantly better I/O
performance than fully-virtualized guests running without the drivers.
This new package provides signed, para-virtualized block and network
drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 as a KVM virtualized guest.
Users may see various warnings during package installation, including:
- Different versions of package are already installed. Older versions of
the package may cause "File exists" error messages to appear. The package
will install successfully the error messages just inform the user that
files for devices exist. This warning can be ignored.
- If the previous installed package was for a different kernel (for
example, kmod-virtio-smp on hugemem system), the installation will fail.
Modules cannot be inserted and a "Wrong number of arguments" error message
will appear. To fix this issue, create nodes manually as covered in the
README file. This issue can be prevented by installing the correct drivers
for the kernel package.
All users running fully-virtualized instances of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based KVM hosts should install this
new package which significantly improve guest I/O performance.
Solution
The post installation script for the virtio package was modified to not
produce certain error messages. The README file contains instructions for
installing the para-virtualized drivers in the event of an incomplete
installation.
Affected Products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 x86_64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 i386
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 x86_64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 i386
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 x86_64
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 i386
Fixes
- BZ - 520871 - lot of warnings are given if install the kmod-virtio before delete the previous one.
- BZ - 530497 - failed to install kmod-virtio in rhel 3.9 latest kernel (2.4.21-61.EL).
CVEs
(none)
References
(none)
The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.