1.159. virtio-win

An updated virtio-win package that fixes a bug and adds an enhancement is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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.

The virtio-win package provides para-virtualized network drivers for the following guest operating systems:

32-bit Windows XP 32-bit Windows Server 2003 64-bit Windows Server 2008 32-bit Windows Server 2008 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 32-bit Windows 7

The virtio-win package also provides para-virtualized disk (block) drivers for the following guest operating systems:

32-bit Windows XP 32-bit Windows Server 2003 64-bit Windows Server 2008 32-bit Windows Server 2008 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 32-bit Windows 7

This update fixes the following bug:

* When installing the VirtIO driver, the relevant dialog window did not offer Windows 7 as the target operating system. With this update, Windows 7 has been added to the list of supported operating systems, and this error no longer occurs. ( BZ#605334)

As well, this update adds the following enhancement:

* The content of the Virtual Floppy Disk (VFD) is now distributed as a part of the package installation, and can be found in the /usr/share/virtio-win/drivers directory. ( BZ#636516)

All users running fully-virtualized instances of Windows on Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based KVM hosts are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves this issue and adds this enhancement.