Issued:
2010-03-30
Updated:
2010-03-30

RHBA-2010:0255 - device-mapper-multipath bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

device-mapper-multipath bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated device-mapper-multipath packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available.

Description

The device-mapper-multipath packages provide tools to manage multipath devices using the device-mapper multipath kernel module.

This update applies the following bug fixes:

  • The kpartx utility creates device maps from partition tables. Device-mapper devices with minor numbers greater than 255 caused kpartx to use the UUID from the wrong device when trying to create partitions. If the device had pre-existing partitions, kpartx would fail to create the new partitions. With this update, kpartx is now able to handle device-mapper devices with minor numbers greater than 255. (BZ#526550)

  • The udev rules for device-mapper-multipath were causing device-mapper to occasionally create multipath devices without using the user specified uid, gid, or mode. They have been replaced with equivalent rules that do not cause this issue. (BZ#518575)

  • When LUNs were unmapped from LSI storage arrays, the multipath rdac path checker was not marking the paths as failed. This caused IO to the device to hang instead of fail. The rdac path checker now marks unmapped LUNs as failed. (BZ#531744)

  • The failover path grouping policy was not ordering the paths by priority, causing multipath to failover to the wrong path for devices with manual failback. The multipath paths are now correctly ordered with the failover path grouping policy. (BZ#537977)

  • On some storage devices, if a LUN is deleted from an existing multipathd device, and a new LUN is presented to the host, it may end up with the same LUN ID and name as the old LUN. In this case, multipath will assume that this is the old LUN and belongs to the existing multipath device. This cause cause corruption. A new path checker "hp_tur" has been added that verifies the WWID of the LUN when it checks the path, to avoid this problem. (BZ#437585)

  • The "tur" path checker was marking paths in standby mode as "failed". It now correctly marks them as "ghost". (BZ#473039)

  • Multipath wasn't correctly showing device renames in dry-run mode. This has been fixed. (BZ#501019)

  • Multipath was incorrectly setting the hardware handler for HP StorageWorks devices.This has been fixed. (BZ#475967)

  • On some storage devices, multipath would display incorrect path information the first time multipath listed the paths after recovery. This has been fixed. (BZ#499080)

  • If a path is removed while it is still part of a multipath device, it was taking multipath minutes to mark it as failed. This should now happen immediately at the end of the next path checking interval. (BZ#527754)

  • the multipathd daemon needs constant access to /var/lib and /var/run. However it was not allowing any devices mounted under /var to be removed. Now it only keeps open what it needs. (BZ#532424)

  • the multipath checker functions were not using the default scsi timeouts. Instead, each checker set its own timeout. Now all checker functions with explicit timeouts use the scsi timeout set it /sys/block/sd/device/timeout by default. This can be changed by setting the "checker_timeout" option in /etc/multipath.conf(BZ#553042)

  • Multipathd was printing extraneous error messages. This has been fixed. (BZ#472171, BZ#502128, BZ#524178)

  • The multipath man page had some mistakes and missing information. This has been fixed. (BZ#481239, BZ#510331, BZ#554830)

  • A locking error could cause multipathd to deadlock if it failed to create a multipath device correctly. This has been fixed (BZ #537281)

This update adds the following enhancements:

  • Default configurations were added for more IBM, HP, SUN, and DELL devices. (BZ#504619i, BZ#512243, BZ#515171, BZ#517896, BZ#540882, BZ#545882)

  • The kpartx utility now supports DASDs devices with more then 65520 cylinders. (BZ#524009)

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues and add these enhancements.

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

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian5ppc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems5s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5ia64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5i386

Updated Packages

  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.ppc.rpm
  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.src.rpm
  • kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.s390x.rpm
  • kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.x86_64.rpm
  • kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.i386.rpm
  • kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.ppc.rpm
  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.i386.rpm
  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.s390x.rpm
  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.ia64.rpm
  • kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.ia64.rpm
  • device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information