Issued:

2009-06-30

Updated:

2009-06-30

RHBA-2009:1133 - kernel bug fix update

Synopsis

kernel bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated kernel packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

These updated packages addresses the following bugs:

• RHSA-2009-1106 included a fix for a rare race condition (BZ#486921). This earlier race condition occurred if an application performed multiple O_DIRECT reads per virtual memory page and also performed fork(2). Unfortunately, the fix included with RHSA-2009-1106 introduced a new, very small, race condition which presented if the system was swapping heavily or heavily reproducing the conditions that were the cause of BZ#486921. With this update, the parent pte is not set to writable if the src pte is unmapped by the VM, preventing the race condition from occurring. (BZ#507297)

• the copy_hugetlb_page_range() function assumed it was safe to drop the source mm->page_table_lock before calling hugetlb_cow(). As a consequence a kernel panic occurred when a particular multi-threaded application did Direct IO on a HUGEPAGE-mapped file region and created new processes. With this update, copy_hugetlb_page_range() calls hugetlb_cow() with the locks held, ensuring the panic does not occur. (BZ#508030)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.

Solution

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

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

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i386.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-doc-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.noarch.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-kdump-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc.rpm
• kernel-kdump-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-PAE-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ppc64.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.src.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-debug-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.ia64.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-debug-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm
• kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.s390x.rpm
• kernel-xen-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-PAE-devel-2.6.18-128.1.16.el5.i686.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 507297
• This content is not included.BZ - 508030

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.