News

Mid May Patches

VMware has release 9 new patches for ESX v3.0.1 and 3 new patches for ESX v3.0.0. The patchlists have been updated and you can find them here:

v3.0.1
v3.0.0

v3.0.1 Fixes include:
# A fix for a race condition upon virtual machine world removal(typically happens during virtual machine power off) and creation(typically happens during virtual machine power on) which causes the ESX Server host to panic.
# Enhancements to improve the performance of ESX Server console operating system network interface (vswif).
# This patch fixes an issue where the Linux virtual machine fails to boot from the network using PXE, and shows the network adapter hardware address as "FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF"
# This patch is a partial fix for memory leaks that can occur in VMware Tools. You must also install patch ESX-6704314 to complete the fix for this issue. Patches ESX-5095559 and ESX-6704314 can be installed in any order. After both patches have been installed, you must upgrade the VMware Tools installed in all virtual machines on that host in order to complete this fix and to end warning messages that your virtual machine does not have the latest version of VMware Tools.
# This patch fixes an issue where the SSL certificates used to authenticate mouse, keyboard and screen (MKS) connections for virtual machines were not being verified by the plugins for those devices.
# This patch provides an enhancement to the software ISCSI initiator that enables array vendors to certify iSCSI arrays that expect SCSI reserve/release commands without a data direction bit.
# This patch fixes an issue where some VMware products support storing configuration information in VMware system files. Under some circumstances, a malicious user could instruct the virtual machine process (VMX) to store malformed data, causing an error. This error could enable a successful Denial-of-Service attack on guest operating systems.
# This patch enhances the mechanism for time zone updates to ensure updated time zone rules are reflected in /etc/localtime.
# An issue where an ESX Server panic can occur during a vm-support command after removing a USB drive from the host.
# Updates the aacraid_esx30 driver to fix a condition that may cause an ESX Server console operating system panic when the corresponding device's /proc node is accessed. One example of such operation is during "vm-support" log collection
# This patch fixes an issue where the ESX Server host stops responding during the boot sequence, when a disk is missing or has failed when in RAID1 configurations on an Integrated RAID LSILogic controllers.
# This patch fixes an issue where restarting the mgmt-vmware service can cause an unexpected reboot of virtual machines that are configured to automatically start or stop.


And for 3.0.0
# This patch fixes an issue where some VMware products support storing configuration information in VMware system files. Under some circumstances, a malicious user could instruct the virtual machine process (VMX) to store malformed data, causing an error. This error could enable a successful Denial-of-Service attack on guest operating systems.
# This patch enhances the mechanism for time zone updates to ensure updated time zone rules are reflected in /etc/localtime.
# This patch fixes an issue where in a 64-bit Windows guest, on a 64-bit host, debugging local programs could create system instability. Using a debugger to step into a syscall instruction may corrupt the virtual machine's register context. This corruption produces unpredictable results including corrupted stack pointers, kernel bugchecks, or vmware-vmx process failures.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Wednesday, May 16, 2007.