4.9 - RHSA-2009:1522

Problem Description:

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, ppc, s390, s390x, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop version 4 - i386, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, x86_64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 4 - i386, ia64, noarch, x86_64

3. Description:

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

This update fixes the following security issues:

* multiple, missing initialization flaws were found in the Linux kernel. Padding data in several core network structures was not initialized properly before being sent to user-space. These flaws could lead to information leaks. (CVE-2005-4881, CVE-2009-3228, Moderate)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* a packet duplication issue was fixed via the RHSA-2008:0665 update; however, the fix introduced a problem for systems using network bonding: Backup slaves were unable to receive ARP packets. When using network bonding in the "active-backup" mode and with the "arp_validate=3" option, the bonding driver considered such backup slaves as being down (since they were not receiving ARP packets), preventing successful failover to these devices. (BZ#519384)

* due to insufficient memory barriers in the network code, a process sleeping in select() may have missed notifications about new data. In rare cases, this bug may have caused a process to sleep forever. (BZ#519386)

* the driver version number in the ata_piix driver was not changed between Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8, even though changes had been made between these releases. This could have prevented the driver from loading on systems that check driver versions, as this driver appeared older than it was. (BZ#519389)

* a bug in nlm_lookup_host() could have led to un-reclaimed locks on file systems, resulting in the umount command failing. This bug could have also prevented NFS services from being relocated correctly in clustered environments. (BZ#519656)

* the data buffer ethtool_get_strings() allocated, for the igb driver, was smaller than the amount of data that was copied in igb_get_strings(), because of a miscalculation in IGB_QUEUE_STATS_LEN, resulting in memory corruption. This bug could have led to a kernel panic. (BZ#522738)

* in some situations, write operations to a TTY device were blocked even when the O_NONBLOCK flag was used. A reported case of this issue occurred when a single TTY device was opened by two users (one using blocking mode, and the other using non-blocking mode). (BZ#523930)

* a deadlock was found in the cciss driver. In rare cases, this caused an NMI lockup during boot. Messages such as "cciss: controller cciss[x] failed, stopping." and "cciss[x]: controller not responding." may have been displayed on the console. (BZ#525725)

* on 64-bit PowerPC systems, a rollover bug in the ibmveth driver could have caused a kernel panic. In a reported case, this panic occurred on a system with a large uptime and under heavy network load. (BZ#527225)

Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

4. 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 http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

5. Bugs fixed (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/):

519384 - [RHEL 4] Arp Monitor - Failed to detect layer 2 switch failure [rhel-4.8.z] 519386 - [RHEL4.5] Even if a process have received data but schedule() in select() cannot return [rhel-4.8.z] 519389 - RHEL4.8-Beta : Update the version number of ata_piix driver [rhel-4.8.z] 519656 - Bug in lockd prevents a locks being freed. [rhel-4.8.z] 520990 - CVE-2009-3228 kernel: tc: uninitialised kernel memory leak 521601 - CVE-2005-4881 kernel: netlink: fix numerous padding memleaks 522738 - [RHEL4.8] igb driver doesn't allocate enough buffer for ethtool_get_strings() [rhel-4.8.z] 523930 - [4.8]Write operation with O_NONBLOCK flag to TTY terminal is blocked [rhel-4.8.z] 525725 - cciss: spinlock deadlock causes NMI on HP systems [rhel-4.8.z] 527225 - BUG in ibmveth_replenish_buffer_pool at drivers/net/ibmveth.c:219 [rhel-4.8.z]