Issued:
2011-12-06
Updated:
2011-12-06

RHBA-2011:1680 - seabios bug fix update

Synopsis

seabios bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

An updated seabios package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The seabios package contains a legacy BIOS implementation which can be used as a coreboot payload.

This update fixes the following bugs:

  • Previously, the smp_mtrr array was not large enough to hold all 31 entries of model-specific registers (MSRs) with current qemu-kvm implementations. As a consequence, installation of a Windows Server 2008 32-bit guest failed when more than one virtual CPU was allocated in it. With this update, the size of the smp_mtrr array has been increased to 32 and now Windows Server 2008 guests install successfully in the described scenario. (BZ#727328)

  • On reboot, reinitialization of the USB HID (Human Interface Device) devices was not done before seabios was setting up timers. Consequently, when the "shutdown -r now" command was executed in a guest, the guest became unresponsive, could not be rebooted, and the "usb-kbd: warning: key event queue full" error message was returned. A patch has been provided to address this issue and the guest now reboots properly in the described scenario. (BZ#733028)

  • Previously, seabios only supported address space up to 40 bits per one address. As a consequence, guests with 1 TB of RAM could not boot. A patch has been provided to address this issue, which raises the memory space limit up to 48 bits, thus supporting up to 281 TB of virtual memory in a guest. (BZ#630975)

  • Previously, the S3/S4 power state capability was advertised in the DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) tables. This could have caused various power management issues. With this update, the S3/S4 capability has been removed from the DSDT tables, thus fixing this bug. (BZ#736522)

  • Previosly, Windows guests failed to generate memory dumps on NMIs (Non-Maskable Interrupts), even if they were properly configured to. With this update, a NMI descriptor has been added to seabios, and Windows guests now generate memory dumps on NMIs correctly. (BZ#750191)

All users of seabios are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes these bugs.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6x86_64

Updated Packages

  • seabios-0.6.1.2-8.el6.src.rpm
  • seabios-0.6.1.2-8.el6.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information