Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch fixes the following security issues:

• The version of ESX userworld OpenSSL library is updated to 0.9.8p. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2010-3864 and CVE-2010-2939 to the issues addressed in this update.
  
  
• The userworld version of pam_krb5 is updated. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2008-3825 and CVE-2009-1384 to the issues addressed in this update.
  
  
• The service console version is updated. This new service console kernel version addresses the 64-bit Compatibility Mode Stack Pointer Underflow issue identified by CVE-2010-3081 as well. This issue has been patched in an ESX 4.1 patch earlier to the release of ESX 4.1 Update 1.
  The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2010-1084, CVE-2010-2066, CVE-2010-2070, CVE-2010-2226, CVE-2010-2248, CVE-2010-2521, CVE-2010-2524, CVE-2010-0008, CVE-2010-0415, CVE-2010-0437, CVE-2009-4308, CVE-2010-0003, CVE-2010-0007, CVE-2010-0307, CVE-2010-1086, CVE-2010-0410, CVE-2010-0730, CVE-2010-1085, CVE-2010-0291, CVE-2010-0622, CVE-2010-1087, CVE-2010-1173, CVE-2010-1437, CVE-2010-1088, CVE-2010-1187, CVE-2010-1436, CVE-2010-1641, and CVE-2010-3081 to the issues addressed in this update.
  

This patch fixes the following issues:

• The Power consumption graph displayed from vSphere Client for ESX host 4.1 hosts does not appear on few ESX hosts from certain vendors. The chart shows consumption as 0 watts. To view the Power consumption graph from vSphere Client, you can click Host, click the Performance tab, and select Power from the drop-down menu. With this patch, the Power consumption graph is updated to support additional hosts from Bull, Dell, HP, Mitsubishi, NEC, and Toshiba.
  
  
• When you try to hot-add memory or CPU to a virtual machine whose reserved memory or CPU is more than half the available physical memory or CPU of the host machine, the operation might fail. After applying this fix, hot-add might fail sometimes when the available physical memory on an ESX host is less than twice the overhead memory of the virtual machine.
  
  • To view the available physical memory or CPU in vSphere Client, select an ESX host and click the Resource Allocation link. The available physical memory is displayed under Memory > Available Capacity. The available CPU is displayed under CPU > Available Capacity.
  • To view the overhead memory of a virtual machine, select the virtual machine and click the Resource Allocation link. The overhead memory is displayed under Memory > Overhead.
    
    
• ESX hosts might fail with a NOT_REACHED bora/modules/vmkernel/tcpip2/freebsd/sys/support/vmk_iscsi.c:648 message on a purple screen when you scan for LUNs from iSCSI storage array by using the esxcfg-swiscsi command from the service console or through vSphere Client (Inventory > Configuration > Storage Adapters > iSCSI Software Adapter). This issue might occur if the tcp.window.size parameter in /etc/vmware/vmkiscsid/iscsid.conf is modified manually. This patch resolves the issue and also logs warning messages in /var/log/vmkiscsid.log for ESX if the tcp.window.size parameter is modified to a value lower than its default.
  
  
• The VMW_PSP_RR policy is set as the default path selection policy for NetApp storage arrays that support SATP_ALUA. You can set this policy by using vCenter Server or through the command-line interface (CLI). For information on setting the policy, see the Deployment Considerations section.
  
  
• The VMW_PSP_RR policy is set as the default path selection policy for IBM 2810XIV storage arrays. You can set this policy by using vCenter Server or through the command-line interface (CLI). For information on setting the policy, see the Deployment Considerations section.
  
  
• Quiesced snapshots might fail on some non-English versions of Windows guest operating systems, such as French versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows 7 guest operating systems. This issue occurs because the VMware Snapshot Provider service does not get registered as a Windows service or as a COM+ application properly on some non-English versions of Microsoft Windows guest operating systems. This issue causes the whole snapshot operation to fail, and as a result, no snapshot is created. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• Creation of quiesced snapshots might not work on non-English versions of Microsoft Windows guest operating systems. The issue occurs when a Windows known folder path contains non-ASCII characters, for example, in the case of the application data folder in Czech Windows guest operating systems. This issue causes the snapshot operation to fail. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• Installation of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 guest operating systems on VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) virtual hard disk fails with the following error:
  Insert the disk labeled:
  VMware PVSCSI Controller Disk
  into drive A:
  The error occurs because txtsetup.oem file on a floppy disk points to the incorrect location of the PVSCSI driver. With this patch, the location is corrected.
  
  
• If you install VMware Tools on a virtual machine on which the Print Spooler service is stopped (Administrative Tools > Services > Print Spooler), and if you select the Thin Print feature (Install VMware Tools > Typical or Custom and select Thin Print under Custom Setup > VMware Device Drivers), uninstalling VMware Tools results in the following error message: Runtime Error! Program: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\TPVCGateway.exe. This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information. Click OK to remove the error message and uninstall VMware Tools. In this patch, the error message does not appear.
  
  
• Windows guest operating systems installed with VMware Windows XP display driver model (XPDM) driver might fail with a vmx_fb.dll error and display a blue screen. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• The Update Tools button for performing VMware Tools upgrade from a Windows guest operating system is disabled for non-administrators. The Update Tools button is available under the Options tab of the VMware Tools Properties window. Also, options in the Shrink and Scripts tabs in the VMware Tools Properties window are disabled for non-administrators. To block VMware Tools upgrades for all users, set the isolation.tools.autoinstall.disable parameter to TRUE in the VMX file. This patch contains only a UI change that disables the Updates Tools button for non-administrators, and does not block upgrades from custom applications.
  
  
• When creating a snapshot of a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine that has vCenter Server 4.1 installed, the snapshot operation might fail to complete. This issue occurs on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines when the ADAM database is installed. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• SCSI warnings similar to the following are written to /var/log/vmkernel:
  Apr 29 04:10:55 localhost vmkernel: 0:00:01:08.161 cpu0:4096)WARNING: ScsiHost: 797: SCSI command failed on handle 1072: Not supported.
  You can ignore the messages. Such messages appear because certain SCSI commands are not supported in the storage array. With this patch, the warning messages are suppressed in /var/log/vmkwarning to reduce support calls.
  
  
• When you create a virtual disk (.vmdk file) with a large size, for example, greater than 1TB, on NFS storage, the creation process might fail with an error: A general system error occurred: Failed to create disk: Error creating disk. This issue occurs when the NFS client does not wait for sufficient time for the NFS storage array to initialize the virtual disk after the RPC parameter of the NFS client times out. By default the timeout value is 10 seconds. This patch provides the configuration option to tune the RPC timeout parameter using the esxcfg-advcfg -s <Timeout> /NFS/SetAttrRPCTimeout command.
  
  
• ESX hosts might log messages similar to the following in the VMkernel log files for LUNs not mapped to ESX hosts: 0:22:30:03.046 cpu8:4315)ScsiScan: 106: Path 'vmhba0:C0:T0:L0': Peripheral qualifier 0x1 not supported. Such messages are logged either when ESX hosts start, or when you initiate a rescan operation of the storage arrays from the vSphere Client, or every 5 minutes after ESX hosts boot. With this patch, the messages are no longer logged.
  
  
• During storage rescan operation, some virtual machines stop responding when any LUN on the host is in an all-paths-down (APD) state. For more information, see KB 1016626 at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1016626. To work around the problem in the KB, manually set the advanced configuration option /VMFS3/FailVolumeOpenIfAPD to 1 before issuing the rescan and then reset it to 0 after the completion of the rescan operation. The issue is resolved in this patch. You need not apply the workaround of setting and not setting the advanced configuration option while starting the rescan operation. Virtual machines on non-APD volumes will no longer fail during a rescan operation, even if some LUNs are in an all-paths-down state.
  
  
• Warning messages similar to the following might appear in /var/log/vmkwarning when an ESX host starts:
  WARNING: AcpiShared: 194 SSDTd+: Table length 11108 > 4096
  This warning is generated when an ESX host reads an ACPI table from the BIOS where the table size is more than 4096 bytes. This warning is harmless and you can ignore it. This fix downgrades the warning to a log.
  
  
• A warning message similar to the following is logged in the VMkernel log:
  x:x:x.x: Cannot change ownership to PASSTHRU (non-ACS capable switch in hierarchy) where x:x:x.x is pci device address
  This warning message is logged because certain devices cannot perform pass-through when you perform a direct assignment of a device to a virtual machine. Access Control Services (ACS) is introduced by PCI SIG to address potential data corruption with direct assignment of devices. In this patch, pass-through of devices that are behind PCI Express (PCIe) switches and without ACS capability is not allowed.
  
  
• After you move a virtual machine running with memory reservation is moved to a different datastore by using storage vMotion, after the completion of storage vMotion, the virtual machine is seen to have a swap file equal in size to the configured memory. Messages similar to the following might be logged in the vmware.log file of the virtual machine:
  May 25 16:42:38.756: vmx| FSR: Decreasing CPU reservation by 750 MHz, due to atomic CPU reservation transfer of that amount. New reservation is 0 MHz.FSR: Decreasing memory reservation by 20480 MB, due to atomic memory reservation transfer of that amount. New reservation is 0 pages. CreateVM: Swap: generating normal swap file name.
  When ESX hosts perform storage vMotion, the swap file size of virtual machines increases to memsize. After applying this patch, the swap file size remains the same after storage vMotion.
  
  
• SCSI WRITE_SAME CDB issued from guest operating systems fails even though storage array supports CDB. Applications running on guest operating systems on an ESX 4.1 host fail after displaying error messages. This issue occurs only on ESX 4.1 when applications use the SCSI WRITE_SAME CDB. CDB reports a degraded performance when applications use an alternate write command. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• ESX hosts cannot revert virtual machines to an earlier snapshot after you upgrade from ESX 3.5 Update 4 to ESX 4.1 Update 1. The following message might be displayed in vCenter Server: The features supported by the processor(s) in this machine are different from the features supported by the processor(s) in the machine on which the checkpoint was saved. Please try to resume the snapshot on a machine where the processors have the same features. This issue might occur when you create virtual machines on ESX 3.0 hosts, perform vMotion and suspend virtual machines on ESX 3.5 hosts, and resume them on ESX 4.x hosts. By applying this patch, the error message does not appear. You can revert to snapshots created on ESX 3.5 hosts, and resume the virtual machines on ESX 4.x hosts.
  
  
• Software running on guest operating systems might use CPUID information to determine characteristics of underlying (virtual or physical) CPU hardware. In some instances, CPUID information returned by virtual hardware differs from that for physical hardware. Based upon these differences, certain components of guest software might malfunction. In this patch, the fix causes certain CPUID responses to more closely match the ones that physical hardware would return. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• When a DOS-based client software (for example, Altiris Deployment Solution) uses PXE to boot a DOS image, the PXE boot sequence might fail while bootstrapping the image from the server, and the boot loader might display a Status: 0xc0000001 error.
  The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• Target information for LUNs is sometimes not displayed in the vCenter Server UI. To view this information in the Configuration tab, perform the following steps:
  
  1. Click Storage Adapters under Hardware.
  2. Click iSCSI Host Bus Adapter in the Storage Adapters pane.
  3. Click Paths in the Details pane.

  In releases earlier than ESX 4.1 Update 1, some iSCSI LUNs do not show the target information. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  

• Cancelling a storage vMotion task when relocating a powered-on virtual machine containing multiple disks on the same datastore to a different datastore on the same host might cause the ESX 4.1 hosts to fail with the following error: Exception: NOT_IMPLEMENTED bora/lib/pollDefault/pollDefault.c:2059.
  The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• Powering on a virtual machine running on ESX 4.1 hosts fails and logs an Insufficient COS swap to power on error message in /var/log/vmware/hostd.log though service console has 800MB of free space and swap enabled. Also, running the free -m command on the service console shows more than 20MB free. After applying this patch, you can power on virtual machines when the swap space exists on ESX 4.1 hosts.
  
  
• The stacked per-virtual machine performance chart data for networking displays incorrect information. You can access the chart from Chart Options in the Advanced Settings on the Performance tab. The network transmit and receive statistics of a virtual machine connected to the Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS) are interchanged, reversed, and incorrectly displayed. The fix in this patch ensures that the host agent on ESX hosts collects the correct statistics and passes them to the performance charts UI. This fix also resolves receive, transmit, and usage network statistics at the host level. Before this fix, the values reported for each of these statistics were zero.
  
  
• The minimum, default, and maximum recommended memory sizes in the virtual machine default settings for RHEL 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems are updated as per the latest RHEL 6 operating system specifications at http://www.redhat.com/. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• The vSphere Client displays incorrect BIOS version and release date on the Processors page in the Configuration tab. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• For blade servers that are running ESX, vCenter Server incorrectly reports the service tag of the blade chassis instead of that for the blade. On a Dell or IBM blade server that is managed by vCenter Server, the service tag number is listed in the System section of the vCenter Server under vCenter Server > Configuration tab under processors. This issue occurs due to the incorrect value for the SerialNumber property of the Fixed CIM OMC_Chassis instance. The issue is resolved by applying this patch.
  
  
• In this patch, Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver is updated to fix some infrequent issues where a Windows virtual machine fails and displays a blue screen.
  

Deployment Considerations

1. Click the Configuration tab.
2. In the left panel under Hardware Adapters, select Storage Adapters.
3. On the right panel, select the vmhba that connects to the NetApp LUNs.
4. Right-click the LUN whose path policy you want to change, and select Manage Paths.
5. In the resulting dialog box, under Policy, set Path Selection to Round Robin.

1. Click the Configuration tab.
2. In the left panel under Hardware Adapters, select Storage Adapters.
3. On the right panel, select the vmhba that connects to the IBM LUNs.
4. Right-click the LUN whose path policy you want to change, and select Manage Paths.
5. In the resulting dialog box, under Policy, set Path Selection to Round Robin.

Patch Download and Installation

See the VMware vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide for instructions on using Update Manager to download and install patches to automatically update ESX 4.1 hosts.

To update ESX 4.1 hosts without using Update Manager, download the patch ZIP file from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and install the bulletin by using esxupdate from the command line of the host. For more information, see the ESX 4.1 Patch Management Guide.