1.168. python-virtinst

An updated python-virtinst package that fixes bugs and adds enhancements is now available.

python-virtinst is a module that helps build and install libvirt based virtual machines.

This updated package addresses the following issues:

* When installing a KVM Windows guest with virt-install, QEMU would not immediately recognise the installation. An error message would appear, despite a successful installation. A minor delay has been added to allow the correct information to be gathered, and the incorrect error message no longer appears. (BZ#498237)

* An unsupported --prompt option was listed in the --help output for virt-image. When virt-image --prompt was run, an error message would print. The --prompt option has been removed from the --help output. (BZ#503721)

* cow, qcow and qcow2 were not listed in the virt-convert format whitelist, although they were supported. An unknown disk format error would print for each format when virt-convert was run from a VMware virtual machine to a virt-image. cow, qcow and qcow2 are now listed.

BZ#506927)

* virt-install would fail when re-installing a virtual system using an .img file that had been moved or deleted, instead of re-creating the guest image. The error was found to be spurious characters in the image paths ('/'). Code has been corrected in python-virtinst to prevent this error. (BZ#511925)

* By default, virtual disks are not opened with O_DIRECT. This meant data would sometimes be cached twice: once inside the virtual machine, and once outside. Users had to manually add <driver name='qemu' cache='none'/> to the virtual machine definition to prevent double caching. The default cache mode of QEMU and KVM guests is now set to "none", which prevents inconsistent disc states. (BZ#512072)

* The --disk option of virt-install was not compatible with the --prompt option, and caused error messages to print when they were used together. The interaction between these two options has been adjusted, and --disk can now be used with --prompt successfully. (BZ#516129)

* When --wait is specified as 0, virt-install should begin the installation process and exit the console. However, a syntax error in the code caused virt-install --wait to perform as if it was not specified, and the console must be closed manually. The syntax error has now been corrected, and if --wait=0, the installation process will begin and close the console. (BZ#517081)

* When running virt-install --prompt --nographics, if the disk size was too big for the available diskspace, a badly formatted error message would print. The error message syntax has been corrected, and the user prompt now appears on a new line beneath the message. (BZ#523767)

* virt-install reported that the installation was still in progress after the installation was complete and the guest machine was being rebooted. The post installation error catching and reporting has been improved. The guest state is now reported accurately. (BZ#545837)

* An os dictionary entry has been backported into this release. Users no longer need to use virtio26 to enable virtio support for guests. This entry can be selected in virt-manager or via virt-install --os-variant. (BZ#547380)

* libvirt was, at times, unable to start guest systems when installing under a minor load, and the install would fail. There were memory problems if another process was writing to disk simultaneously, and virt-install was misreading nonsparse disk images. This fix modifies the libvirt timeout manager to better cope with shared I/O conditions an adds the 0_DSYNC flag to python-virtinst to manage nonsparse disk reading. (BZ#558855)

* Previously, a patch was added to virtinst to avoid non-sparse volume creation, because libvirt did not drop the pool lock while allocating. However, the libvirt version in this release does not have this issue. The patch has been removed and virt-install no longer ignores --nonsparse when creating an image inside libvirt's storage pool. (BZ#569339)

Users are advised to upgrade to this updated python-virtinst package which resolves these issues.