6.5 Technical Notes


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Detailed notes on the changes implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5

Edition 5

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Technical Notes list and document the changes made to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 operating system and its accompanying applications between Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and minor release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.

Preface

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Technical Notes list and document the changes made to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 operating system and its accompanying applications between minor release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and minor release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.
For system administrators and others planning Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 upgrades and deployments, the Technical Notes provide a single, organized record of the bugs fixed in, features added to, and Technology Previews included with this new release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For auditors and compliance officers, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Technical Notes provide a single, organized source for change tracking and compliance testing.
For every user, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Technical Notes provide details of what has changed in this new release.

Note

The Package Manifest is available as a separate document.

Chapter 1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 International Languages

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 supports installation of multiple languages and changing of languages based on your requirements.
The following languages are supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5:
  • East Asian Languages - Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese
  • European Languages - English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese Brazilian, and Russian,
  • Indic Languages - Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu
The table below summarizes the currently supported languages, their locales, default fonts installed and packages required for some of the supported languages
Table 1.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 International Languages
Territory Language Locale Fonts Package Names
China Simplified Chinese zh_CN.UTF-8 AR PL (ShanHeiSun and Zenkai) Uni fonts-chinese, scim-pinyin, scim-tables
Japan Japanese ja_JP.UTF-8 Sazanami (Gothic and Mincho) fonts-japanese, scim-anthy
Korea Hangul ko_KR.UTF-8 Baekmuk (Batang, Dotum, Gulim, Headline) fonts-korean, scim-hangul
Taiwan Traditional Chinese zh_TW.UTF-8 AR PL (ShanHeiSun and Zenkai) Uni fonts-chinese, scim-chewing, scim-tables
Brazil Portuguese pt_BR.UTF-8 standard latin fonts
France French ft_FR.UTF-8 standard latin fonts
Germany German de_DE.UTF-8 standard latin fonts
Italy Italy it_IT.UTF-8 standard latin fonts
Russia Russian ru_RU.UTF-8 KOI8-R, fonts-KOI8-R-100dpi, fonts-KOI8-R-75dpi and xorg-x11-fonts-cyrillic fonts-KO18-R, fonts-KO18-R-100 dpi,fonts-KO18-R-75dpi, xorg-x11-fonts-cyrillic
Spain Spanish es_ES.UTF-8 standard latin fonts
India Assamese as_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Bengali fonts-bengali, scim-m17n, m17n-db-assamese
Bengali bn_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Bengali fonts-bengali, scim-m17n, m17n-db-bengali
Gujarati gu_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Gujarati fonts-gujarati, scim-m17n, m17n-db-gujarati
Hindi hi_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Hindi fonts-hindi, scim-m17n, m17n-db-hindi
Kannada kn_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Kannada fonts-kannada, scim-m17n, m17n-db-kannada
Malayalam ml_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Malayalam fonts-malayalam, scim-m17n, m17n-db-malayalam
Marathi mr_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Hindi fonts-hindi, scim-m17n, m17n-db-marathi
Oriya or_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Oriya fonts-oriya, scim-m17n, m17n-db-oriya
Punjabi pa_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Punjabi fonts-punjabi, scim-m17n, m17n-db-punjabi
Tamil ta_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Tamil fonts-tamil, scim-m17n, m17n-db-tamil
Telugu te_IN.UTF-8 Lohit Telugu fonts-telugu, scim-m17n, m17n-db-telugu

Chapter 2. Important Changes to External Kernel Parameters

This chapter provides system administrators with a summary of significant changes in the kernel shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. These changes include added or updated procfs entries, sysfs default values, boot parameters, kernel configuration options, or any noticeable behavior changes.
reserved_blocks
This RW file contains a number of reserved blocks in the file system which are used in specific situations to avoid unexpected No space left on device (ENOSPC) errors or possible data loss.
proc/<pid>/comm and /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm files
These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings' comm values. The comm value is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN macro (currently 16 chars) will result in a truncated comm value.
int_pln_enable
This parameter allows users to enable power limit notification interrupts.
nfsd.nfs4_disable_idmapping
The default value of this parameter is 0. When set to 1, NFSv4 server returns only numeric user IDs (UIDs) and group IDs (GIDs) to clients using AUTH_SYS mode, and will accept numeric UIDs and GIDs from such clients. This facilitates migration from NFS version 2 to NFS version 3.
PCI Subsystem Options
The following options for the pci kernel parameter can be used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5:
  • pcie_bus_tune_off—disables PCIe maximum payload size (MPS) tuning and uses the BIOS-configured MPS default values.
  • pcie_bus_safe—sets every device MPS to the largest value supported by all devices below the root complex.
  • pcie_bus_perf—sets the device MPS to the largest allowable MPS based on its parent bus.
  • pcie_bus_peer2peer— sets every device's MPS to 128B, which every device is guaranteed to support.
smbios_26_uuid
With this parameter, universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) are displayed in the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) 2.6 format.
tsc_init_debug
With this parameter, additional information about the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is displayed during system boot.
usbcore.usbfs_memory_mb
This option displays memory limit in MB for buffers allowated by USB device file system (usbfs).
tcp_limit_output_bytes
tcp_limit_output_bytes controls TCP Small Queue limit per TCP socket.
tcp_challenge_ack_limit
tcp_challenge_ack_limit limits the number of challenge acknowledgements sent per second, as recommended in RFC 5961 (Improving TCP's Robustness to Blind In-Window Attacks).
accept_ra
The accept_ra boolean allows for accepting router discovery messages (also known as router advertisements).
cookie_hmac_alg
cookie_hmac_alg is used to select the keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC) algorithm used when generating the cookie value sent by a listening SCTP socket to a connecting client in the INIT-ACK chunk. Valid values are:
  • md5
  • sha1
  • none
nf_conntrack_acct
The nf_conntrack_acct boolean enables connection tracking flow accounting.
nf_conntrack_buckets
nf_conntrack_buckets determines the size of a hash table. If it is not specified as parameter during module loading, the default size is calculated by dividing total memory by 16384 to determine the number of buckets but the hash table will never have fewer than 32 nor more than 16384 buckets.
nf_conntrack_checksum
This parameter is used to verify the checksums of incoming packets. Packets with invalid checksums are in INVALID state. If this is enabled, such packets will not be considered for connection tracking.
nf_conntrack_events_retry_timeout
This option is only relevant when "reliable connection tracking events" are used. Normally, ctnetlink is "lossy", that is, events are normally dropped when userspace listeners cannot keep up. Userspace can request "reliable event mode". When this mode is active, the connection tracking will only be destroyed after the event was delivered. If event delivery fails, the kernel periodically re-tries to send the event to userspace. The default value 15 is the maximum interval the kernel should use when re-trying to deliver the destroy event. A higher number means there will be fewer delivery retries and it will take longer for a backlog to be processed.
merge_across_nodes
The merge_across_nodes parameter specifies if pages from different NUMA nodes can be merged. When set to 0, Kernel SamePage Merging (KSM) merges only pages which physically reside in the memory area of the same NUMA node. 1 is the default value and merging across nodes is performed as in earlier releases.

Chapter 3. Device Drivers

This chapter provides a comprehensive listing of all device drivers which were updated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.

Storage Drivers

  • The Emulex be2iscsi driver has been upgraded to the latest upstream version.
  • The megaraid_sas driver has been upgraded to version 6.600.18.00.
  • The pm8001/pm80xx driver has been added in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 to add support for PMC-Sierra Adaptec Series 6H and 7H SAS/SATA HBA cards as well as PMC Sierra 8081, 8088, and 8089 chip based SAS/SATA controllers.
  • 12Gbps SAS devices from LSI are now supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • The Brocade BFA driver has been updates to version 3.2.21.1.
  • The NVMe driver has been added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
  • Starting in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, iSCSI and FCoE boot on Broadcom devices is fully supported. These two features are provided by the bnx2i and bnx2fc Broadcom drivers.

Network Drivers

  • The Virtual Extensible LAN, vxlan, driver has been updated.
  • Support for Single Root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) has been added to the qlcnic driver as a Technology Preview.
  • The Brocade BNA driver has been updated to version 3.1.2.1.
  • The ixgbevf driver has been updated to the latest upstream version.
  • The igbvf driver has been updated the to latest upstream version.
  • The bnx2x driver has been updated to version 1.78.17-0.
  • The Emulex be2net driver has been updated to version 4.6.x.
  • The qlcnic driver has been updated to add support for the QLogic 83XX CNA adapter.
  • The e1000e driver has been updated to the latest upstream version.
  • The tg3 driver has been updated to include various bug fixes and new features, including hardware PTP support.
  • The sfc driver has been upgraded to upstream version 3.2 and includes hardware accelerated receive flow steering (RFS).
  • The igb driver has been updated to version 4.1.2 to include software time stamping support.
  • The qlge driver has been updated to version 1.00.00.32.

Miscellaneous Drivers

  • The hpilo driver has been upgraded to the latest upstream version.

Chapter 4. Technology Previews

This chapter provides a list of all available Technology Previews in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.
Technology Preview features are currently not supported under Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription services, may not be functionally complete, and are generally not suitable for production use. However, these features are included as a customer convenience and to provide the feature with wider exposure.
Customers may find these features useful in a non-production environment. Customers are also free to provide feedback and functionality suggestions for a Technology Preview feature before it becomes fully supported. Errata will be provided for high-severity security issues.
During the development of a Technology Preview feature, additional components may become available to the public for testing. It is the intention of Red Hat clustering to fully support Technology Preview features in a future release.

4.1. Storage and File Systems

Cross Realm Kerberos Trust Functionality for samba4 Libraries
The Cross Realm Kerberos Trust functionality provided by Identity Management, which relies on the capabilities of the samba4 client library, is included as a Technology Preview starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4. This functionality uses the libndr-nbt library to prepare Connection-less Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) messages.
Package: samba-3.6.9-164
System Information Gatherer and Reporter (SIGAR)
The System Information Gatherer and Reporter (SIGAR) is a library and command-line tool for accessing operating system and hardware level information across multiple platforms and programming languages. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and later, SIGAR is considered a Technology Preview package.
Package: sigar-1.6.5-0.4.git58097d9
DIF/DIX support
DIF/DIX, is a new addition to the SCSI Standard and a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. DIF/DIX increases the size of the commonly used 512-byte disk block from 512 to 520 bytes, adding the Data Integrity Field (DIF). The DIF stores a checksum value for the data block that is calculated by the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) when a write occurs. The storage device then confirms the checksum on receive, and stores both the data and the checksum. Conversely, when a read occurs, the checksum can be checked by the storage device, and by the receiving HBA.
The DIF/DIX hardware checksum feature must only be used with applications that exclusively issue O_DIRECT I/O. These applications may use the raw block device, or the XFS file system in O_DIRECT mode. (XFS is the only file system that does not fall back to buffered I/O when doing certain allocation operations.) Only applications designed for use with O_DIRECT I/O and DIF/DIX hardware should enable this feature.
For more information, refer to section Block Devices with DIF/DIX Enabled in the Storage Administration Guide.
Package: kernel-2.6.32-431
Btrfs, BZ#614121
Btrfs is under development as a file system capable of addressing and managing more files, larger files, and larger volumes than the ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems. Btrfs is designed to make the file system tolerant of errors, and to facilitate the detection and repair of errors when they occur. It uses checksums to ensure the validity of data and metadata, and maintains snapshots of the file system that can be used for backup or repair. The Btrfs Technology Preview is only available on AMD64 and Intel 64 architectures.

Warning

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes Btrfs as a technology preview to allow you to experiment with this file system. You should not choose Btrfs for partitions that will contain valuable data or that are essential for the operation of important systems.
Package: btrfs-progs-0.20-0.2.git91d9eec
LVM Application Programming Interface (API)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 features the new LVM application programming interface (API) as a Technology Preview. This API is used to query and control certain aspects of LVM.
Package: lvm2-2.02.100-8
FS-Cache
FS-Cache in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 enables networked file systems (for example, NFS) to have a persistent cache of data on the client machine.
Package: cachefilesd-0.10.2-1
eCryptfs File System
eCryptfs is a stacked, cryptographic file system. It is transparent to the underlying file system and provides per-file granularity. eCryptfs is provided as a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Package: ecryptfs-utils-82-6

4.2. Networking

Mellanox SR-IOV Support
Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is now supported as a Technology Preview in the Mellanox libmlx4 library and the following drivers:
  • mlx_core
  • mlx4_ib (InfiniBand protocol)
  • mlx_en (Ethernet protocol)
Package: kernel-2.6.32-335
Open multicast ping (Omping), BZ#657370
Open Multicast Ping (Omping) is a tool to test the IP multicast functionality, primarily in the local network. This utility allows users to test IP multicast functionality and assists in the diagnosing if an issues is in the network configuration or elsewhere (that is, a bug). In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Omping is provided as a Technology Preview.
Package: omping-0.0.4-1
QFQ queuing discipline
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the tc utility has been updated to work with the Quick Fair Scheduler (QFQ) kernel features. Users can now take advantage of the new QFQ traffic queuing discipline from userspace. This feature is considered a Technology Preview.
Package: kernel-2.6.32-431
vios-proxy, BZ#721119
vios-proxy is a stream-socket proxy for providing connectivity between a client on a virtual guest and a server on a Hypervisor host. Communication occurs over virtio-serial links.
Package: vios-proxy-0.2-1

4.3. Clustering and High Availability

luci support for fence_sanlock
The luci tool now supports the sanlock fence agent as a Technology Preview. The agent is available in the luci's list of agents.
Package: luci-0.26.0-48
Recovering a node via a hardware watchdog device
New fence_sanlock agent and checkquorum.wdmd, included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 as a Technology Preview, provide new mechanisms to trigger the recovery of a node via a hardware watchdog device. Tutorials on how to enable this Technology Preview will be available at https://fedorahosted.org/cluster/wiki/HomePage
Note that SELinux in enforcing mode is currently not supported.
Package: cluster-3.0.12.1-59
keepalived
The keepalived package has been included as a Technology Preview, starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4. The keepalived package provides simple and robust facilities for load-balancing and high-availability. The load-balancing framework relies on the well-know and widely used Linux Virtual Server kernel module providing Layer4 network load-balancing. The keepalived daemon implements a set of health checkers to load-balanced server pools according to their state. The keepalived daemon also implements the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), allowing router or director failover to achieve high availability.
Package: keepalived-1.2.7-3
HAProxy
HAProxy is a stand-alone, layer-7, high-performance network load balancer for TCP and HTTP-based applications which can perform various types of scheduling based on the content of the HTTP requests. The haproxy package is included as a Technology Preview, starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4.
Package: haproxy-1.4.24-2

4.4. Authentication

Simultaneous maintaining of TGTs for multiple KDCs
Kerberos version 1.10 added a new cache storage type, DIR:, which allows Kerberos to maintain Ticket Granting Tickets (TGTs) for multiple Key Distribution Centers (KDCs) simultaneously and auto-select between them when negotiating with Kerberized resources. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and later includes SSSD enhanced to allow the users to select the DIR: cache for users that are logging in via SSSD. This feature is introduced as a Technology Preview.
Package: sssd-1.9.2-129

4.5. Security

TPM
TPM (Trusted Platform Module) hardware can create, store and use RSA keys securely (without ever being exposed in memory), verify a platform's software state using cryptographic hashes and more. The trousers and tpm-tools packages are considered a Technology Preview.
Packages: trousers-0.3.4-4, tpm-tools-1.3.4-2

4.6. Devices

mpt2sas lockless mode
The mpt2sas driver is fully supported. However, when used in the lockless mode, the driver is a Technology Preview.
Package: kernel-2.6.32-431

4.7. Kernel

Kernel Media support
The following features are presented as Technology Previews:
  • The latest upstream video4linux
  • Digital video broadcasting
  • Primarily infrared remote control device support
  • Various webcam support fixes and improvements
Package: kernel-2.6.32-431
Linux (NameSpace) Container [LXC]
Linux containers provide a flexible approach to application runtime containment on bare-metal systems without the need to fully virtualize the workload. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides application level containers to separate and control the application resource usage policies via cgroups and namespaces. This release includes basic management of container life-cycle by allowing creation, editing and deletion of containers via the libvirt API and the virt-manager GUI. Linux Containers are a Technology Preview.
Packages: libvirt-0.9.10-21, virt-manager-0.9.0-14
Diagnostic pulse for the fence_ipmilan agent, BZ#655764
A diagnostic pulse can now be issued on the IPMI interface using the fence_ipmilan agent. This new Technology Preview is used to force a kernel dump of a host if the host is configured to do so. Note that this feature is not a substitute for the off operation in a production cluster.
Package: fence-agents-3.1.5-35

Chapter 5. Deprecated Functionality

virtio-win component, BZ#1001981
The VirtIO SCSI driver has been removed from the virtio-win package and is no longer supported on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 platform.
qemu-kvm component
The qemu-guest-agent-win32 package is no longer shipped as part of the qemu-kvm package. The Windows guest agent is now delivered in the Supplementary channel together with other Windows components, for example, virtio-win drivers.
fence-agents component
Prior to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 release, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability Add-On was considered fully supported on certain VMware ESXi/vCenter versions in combination with the fence_scsi fence agent. Due to limitations in these VMware platforms in the area of SCSI-3 persistent reservations, the fence_scsi fencing agent is no longer supported on any version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability Add-On in VMware virtual machines, except when using iSCSI-based storage. See the Virtualization Support Matrix for High Availability for full details on supported combinations:
Users using fence_scsi on an affected combination can contact Red Hat Global Support Services for assistance in evaluating alternative configurations or for additional information.
systemtap component
The systemtap-grapher package has been removed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/757983.
matahari component
The Matahari agent framework (matahari-*) packages have been removed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Focus for remote systems management has shifted towards the use of the CIM infrastructure. This infrastructure relies on an already existing standard which provides a greater degree of interoperability for all users.
distribution component
The following packages have been deprecated and are subjected to removal in a future release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. These packages will not be updated in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 repositories and customers who do not use the MRG-Messaging product are advised to uninstall them from their system.
  • mingw-gcc
  • mingw-boost
  • mingw32-qpid-cpp
  • python-qmf
  • python-qpid
  • qpid-cpp
  • qpid-qmf
  • qpid-tests
  • qpid-tools
  • ruby-qpid
  • saslwrapper
Red Hat MRG-Messaging customers will continue to receive updated functionality as part of their regular updates to the product.
fence-virt component
The libvirt-qpid is no longer part of the fence-virt package.
openscap component
The openscap-perl subpackage has been removed from openscap.

Chapter 6. Known Issues

6.1. Installation

dracut component
For Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) from SAN on Dell systems which enable biosdevname=1 by default, udev typically renames all network interfaces to their biosdevname naming convention during boot. However, a bug in udev prevents the FCoE boot interface from being renamed. This can result in occasional shutdown stalls. In order to install and shut down the system correctly, it is recommended to use the biosdevname=0 installation parameter to avoid biosdevname naming in this case.
dracut component
For iSCSI boot from SAN on Dell systems which enable settingbiosdevname=1 by default, the installation completes successfully, but the system will not be able to mount the rootfs partition after reboot. This is because of a bug in Dracut where the boot network interface is not brought up if biosdevname naming is used. In order to install and reboot the system successfully in this case, use the biosdevname=0 installation parameter to avoid biosdevname naming.
anaconda component
Setting the qla4xxx parameter ql4xdisablesysfsboot to 1 may cause boot from SAN failures.
anaconda component
To automatically create an appropriate partition table on disks that are uninitialized or contain unrecognized formatting, use the zerombr kickstart command. The --initlabel option of the clearpart command is not intended to serve this purpose.
anaconda component, BZ#676025
Users performing an upgrade using the Anaconda's text mode interface who do not have a boot loader already installed on the system, or who have a non-GRUB boot loader, need to select Skip Boot Loader Configuration during the installation process. Boot loader configuration will need to be completed manually after installation. This problem does not affect users running Anaconda in the graphical mode (graphical mode also includes VNC connectivity mode).
anaconda component
On s390x systems, you cannot use automatic partitioning and encryption. If you want to use storage encryption, you must perform custom partitioning. Do not place the /boot volume on an encrypted volume.
anaconda component
The order of device names assigned to USB attached storage devices is not guaranteed. Certain USB attached storage devices may take longer to initialize than others, which can result in the device receiving a different name than you expect (for example, sdc instead of sda).
During installation, verify the storage device size, name, and type when configuring partitions and file systems.
kernel component
Recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 releases use a new naming scheme for network interfaces on some machines. As a result, the installer may use different names during an upgrade in certain scenarios (typically em1 is used instead of eth0 on new Dell machines). However, the previously used network interface names are preserved on the system and the upgraded system will still use the previously used interfaces. This is not the case for Yum upgrades.
anaconda component
The kdump default on feature currently depends on Anaconda to insert the crashkernel= parameter to the kernel parameter list in the boot loader's configuration file.
firstaidkit component
The firstaidkit-plugin-grub package has been removed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2. As a consequence, in rare cases, the system upgrade operation may fail with unresolved dependencies if the plug-in has been installed in a previous version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. To avoid this problem, the firstaidkit-plugin-grub package should be removed before upgrading the system. However, in most cases, the system upgrade completes as expected.
anaconda component, BZ#623261
In some circumstances, disks that contain a whole disk format (for example, an LVM Physical Volume populating a whole disk) are not cleared correctly using the clearpart --initlabel kickstart command. Adding the --all switch—as in clearpart --initlabel --all—ensures disks are cleared correctly.
anaconda component
When installing on the IBM System z architecture, if the installation is being performed over SSH, avoid resizing the terminal window containing the SSH session. If the terminal window is resized during the installation, the installer will exit and the installation will terminate.
yaboot component, BZ#613929
The kernel image provided on the CD/DVD is too large for Open Firmware. Consequently, on the POWER architecture, directly booting the kernel image over a network from the CD/DVD is not possible. Instead, use yaboot to boot from a network.
anaconda component
The Anaconda partition editing interface includes a button labeled Resize. This feature is intended for users wishing to shrink an existing file system and an underlying volume to make room for an installation of a new system. Users performing manual partitioning cannot use the Resize button to change sizes of partitions as they create them. If you determine a partition needs to be larger than you initially created it, you must delete the first one in the partitioning editor and create a new one with the larger size.
system-config-kickstart component
Channel IDs (read, write, data) for network devices are required for defining and configuring network devices on IBM S/390 systems. However, system-config-kickstart—the graphical user interface for generating a kickstart configuration—cannot define channel IDs for a network device. To work around this issue, manually edit the kickstart configuration that system-config-kickstart generates to include the desired network devices.

6.2. Entitlement

subscription-manager component
If multiple repositories are enabled, subscription-manager installs product certificates from all repositories instead of installing the product certificate only from the repository from which the RPM package was installed.

6.3. Deployment

389-ds-base component, BZ#878111
The ns-slapd utility terminates unexpectedly if it cannot rename the dirsrv-<instance> log files in the /var/log/ directory due to incorrect permissions on the directory.
cpuspeed component, BZ#626893
Some HP Proliant servers may report incorrect CPU frequency values in /proc/cpuinfo or /sys/device/system/cpu/*/cpufreq. This is due to the firmware manipulating the CPU frequency without providing any notification to the operating system. To avoid this ensure that the HP Power Regulator option in the BIOS is set to OS Control. An alternative available on more recent systems is to set Collaborative Power Control to Enabled.
releng component, BZ#644778
Some packages in the Optional repositories on RHN have multilib file conflicts. Consequently, these packages cannot have both the primary architecture (for example, x86_64) and secondary architecture (for example, i686) copies of the package installed on the same machine simultaneously. To work around this issue, install only one copy of the conflicting package.
grub component, BZ#695951
On certain UEFI-based systems, you may need to type BOOTX64 rather than bootx64 to boot the installer due to case sensitivity issues.
grub component, BZ#698708
When rebuilding the grub package on the x86_64 architecture, the glibc-static.i686 package must be used. Using the glibc-static.x86_64 package will not meet the build requirements.

6.4. Virtualization

qemu-kvm component, BZ#1159613
If a virtio device is created where the number of vectors is set to a value higher than 32, the device behaves as if it was set to a zero value on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, but not on Enterprise Linux 7. The resulting vector setting mismatch causes a migration error if the number of vectors on any virtio device on either platform is set to 33 or higher. It is, therefore, not recommended to set the vector value to be greater than 32.
virtio-win component
When upgrading the NetKVM driver through the Windows Device Manager, the old registry values are not removed. As a consequence, for example, non-existent parameters may be available.
qemu-kvm component
When working with very large images (larger than 2TB) created with very small cluster sizes (for example, 512bytes), block I/O errors can occur due to timeouts in qemu. To prevent this problem from occurring, use the default cluster size of 64KiB or larger.
kernel component
On Microsoft Windows Server 2012 containing large dynamic VHDX (Hyper-V virtual hard disk) files and using the ext3 file system, a call trace can appear, and, consequently, it is not possible to shut down the guest. To work around this problem, use the ext4 file system or set a logical block size of 1MB when creating a VHDX file. Note that this can only be done by using Microsoft PowerShell as the Hyper-V manager does not expose the –BlockSizeBytes option which has the default value of 32MB. To create a dynamix VHDX file with an approximate size of 2.5TB and 1MB block size run:
New-VHD –Path .\MyDisk.vhdx –SizeBytes 5120MB –BlockSizeBytes 1MB -Dynamic
libvirt component
The storage drivers do not support the virsh vol-resize command options --allocate and --shrink. Use of the --shrink option will result in the following error message:
error: invalid argument: storageVolumeResize: unsupported flags (0x4)
Use of the --allocate option will result in the following error message:
error: invalid argument: storageVolumeResize: unsupported flags (0x1)
Shrinking a volume's capacity is possible as long as the value provided on the command line is greater than the volume allocation value as seen with the virsh vol-info command. You can shrink an existing volume by name through the followind sequence of steps:
  1. Dump the XML of the larger volume into a file using the vol-dumpxml .
  2. Edit the file to change the name, path, and capacity values, where the capacity must be greater than or equal to the allocation.
  3. Create a temporary smaller volume using the vol-create with the edited XML file.
  4. Back up and restore the larger volumes data using the vol-download and vol-upload commands to the smaller volume.
  5. Use the vol-delete command to remove the larger volume.
  6. Use the vol-clone command to restore the name from the larger volume.
  7. Use the vol-delete command to remove the temporary volume.
In order to allocate more space on the volume, follow a similar sequence, but adjust the allocation to a larger value than the existing volume.
virtio-win component
It is not possible to downgrade a driver using the Search for the best driver in these locations option because the newer and installed driver will be selected as the "best" driver. If you want to force installation of a particular driver version, use the Don't search option and the Have Disk button to select the folder of the older driver. This method will allow you to install an older driver on a system that already has a driver installed.
kernel component
There is a known issue with the Microsoft Hyper-V host. If a legacy network interface controller (NIC) is used on a multiple-CPU virtual machine, there is an interrupt problem in the emulated hardware when the IRQ balancing daemon is running. Call trace information is logged in the /var/log/messages file.
libvirt component, BZ#888635
Under certain circumstances, virtual machines try to boot from an incorrect device after a network boot failure. For more information, please refer to this article on Customer Portal.
numad component, BZ#872524
If numad is run on a system with a task that has very large resident memory (>= 50% total system memory), then the numad-initiated NUMA page migrations for that task can cause swapping. The swapping can then induce long latencies for the system. An example is running a 256GB Microsoft Windows KVM Virtual Machine on a 512GB host. The Windows guest will fault in all pages on boot in order to zero them. On a four node system, numad will detect that a 256GB task can fit in a subset of two or three nodes, and then attempt to migrate it to that subset. Swapping can then occur and lead to latencies. These latencies may then cause the Windows guest to hang, as timing requirements are no longer met. Therefore, on a system with only one or two very large Windows machines, it is recommended to disable numad.
Note that this problem is specific to Windows 2012 guests that use more memory than exists in a single node. Windows 2012 guests appear to allocate memory more gradually than other Windows guest types, which triggers the issue. Other varieties of Windows guests do not seem to experience this problem. You can work around this problem by:
  • limiting Windows 2012 guests to less memory than exists in a given node -- so on a typical 4 node system with even memory distribution, the guest would need to be less than the total amount of system memory divided by 4; or
  • allowing the Windows 2012 guests to finish allocating all of its memory before allowing numad to run. numad will handle extremely huge Windows 2012 guests correctly after allowing a few minutes for the guest to finish allocating all of its memory.
grubby component, BZ#893390
When a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 guest updates the kernel and then the guest is turned off through Microsoft Hyper-V Manager, the guest fails to boot due to incomplete grub information. This is because the data is not synced properly to disk when the machine is turned off through Hyper-V Manager. To work around this problem, execute the sync command before turning the guest off.
kernel component
Using the mouse scroll wheel does not work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 guests that run under certain version of Microsoft Hyper-V Manager. However, the scroll wheel works as expected when the vncviewer utility is used.
kernel component, BZ#874406
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 guests using the e1000 driver can become unresponsive consuming 100% CPU during boot or reboot.
kernel component
When a kernel panic is triggered on a Microsoft Hyper-V guest, the kdump utility does not capture the kernel error information; an error is only displayed on the command line. This is a host problem. Guest kdump works as expected on Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 host.
quemu-kvm component, BZ#871265
AMD Opteron G1, G2 or G3 CPU models on qemu-kvm use the family and models values as follows: family=15 and model=6. If these values are larger than 20, the lahfm_lm CPU feature is ignored by Linux guests, even when the feature is enabled. To work around this problem, use a different CPU model, for example AMD Opteron G4.
qemu-kvm component, BZ#860929
KVM guests must not be allowed to update the host CPU microcode. KVM does not allow this, and instead always returns the same microcode revision or patch level value to the guest. If the guest tries to update the CPU microcode, it will fail and show an error message similar to:
CPU0: update failed (for patch_level=0x6000624)
To work around this, configure the guest to not install CPU microcode updates; for example, uninstall the microcode_ctl package Red Hat Enterprise Linux of Fedora guests.
virt-p2v component, BZ#816930
Converting a physical server running either Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 which has its file system root on an MD device is not supported. Converting such a guest results in a guest which fails to boot. Note that conversion of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 server which has its root on an MD device is supported.
virt-p2v component, BZ#808820
When converting a physical host with a multipath storage, Virt-P2V presents all available paths for conversion. Only a single path must be selected. This must be a currently active path.
virtio-win component, BZ#615928
The balloon service on Windows 7 guests can only be started by the Administrator user.
libvirt component, BZ#622649
libvirt uses transient iptables rules for managing NAT or bridging to virtual machine guests. Any external command that reloads the iptables state (such as running system-config-firewall) will overwrite the entries needed by libvirt. Consequently, after running any command or tool that changes the state of iptables, guests may lose access to the network. To work around this issue, use the service libvirt reload command to restore libvirt's additional iptables rules.
virtio-win component, BZ#612801
A Windows virtual machine must be restarted after the installation of the kernel Windows driver framework. If the virtual machine is not restarted, it may crash when a memory balloon operation is performed.
qemu-kvm component, BZ#720597
Installation of Windows 7 Ultimate x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 1 on a guest with more than 4GB of RAM and more than one CPU from a DVD medium can lead to the system being unresponsive and, consequently, to a crash during the final steps of the installation process. To work around this issue, use the Windows Update utility to install the Service Pack.
qemu-kvm component, BZ#612788
A dual function Intel 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Controller interface (codename: Kawela, PCI Vendor/Device ID: 8086:10c9) cannot have both physical functions (PF's) device-assigned to a Windows 2008 guest. Either physical function can be device assigned to a Windows 2008 guest (PCI function 0 or function 1), but not both.
virt-v2v component, BZ#618091
The virt-v2v utility is able to convert guests running on an ESX server. However, if an ESX guest has a disk with a snapshot, the snapshot must be on the same datastore as the underlying disk storage. If the snapshot and the underlying storage are on different datastores, virt-v2v will report a 404 error while trying to retrieve the storage.
virt-v2v component, BZ#678232
The VMware Tools application on Microsoft Windows is unable to disable itself when it detects that it is no longer running on a VMware platform. Consequently, converting a Microsoft Windows guest from VMware ESX, which has VMware Tools installed, will result in errors. These errors usually manifest as error messages on start-up, and a "Stop Error" (also known as a BSOD) when shutting down the guest. To work around this issue, uninstall VMware Tools on Microsoft Windows guests prior to conversion.
libguestfs component
The libguestfs packages do not support remote access to disks over the network in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Consequently, the virt-sysprep tool as well as other tools do not work with remote disks. Users who need to access disks remotely with tools such as virt-sysprep are advised to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

6.5. Storage and File Systems

lvm2 component, BZ#1024347
An event is generated for any device that is being watched for changes by means of a special WATCH udev rule. This udev rule is also used for logical volumes and it causes the /dev/ directory to be up-to-date with any data written to the logical volume (mainly the symlinks that are based on metadata, like the content of the /dev/disk directory). The event is generated each time the device is closed after being open for writing.
device-mapper: remove ioctl on  failed: Device or resource busy
This is caused by the LVM command and udev interaction where the original logical volume is open for writing and then part of the logical volume is zeroed so it is prepared for thin pool use. Then the logical volume is closed, which triggers the WATCH rule. Then LVM tries to remove the original volume while it can still be opened by udev. This causes the error message to appear. LVM tries to remove the logical volume a few times before exiting with an lvconvert failure. Normally, udev should process the logical volume quickly and LVM should continue retrying to remove the logical volume. Normally, users can just ignore this error message; the logical volume is processed correctly on next retry. If the number of retries is not sufficient, then lvconvert can fail as a result. If this is the case, users are encouraged to comment out the OPTIONS+="watch" line in the /lib/udev/rules.d/13-dm-disk.rules file. This will cause the WATCH rule for LVM volumes to be disabled. However, this may cause the /dev/ content to be out-of-sync with actual metadata state stored on the logical volume. If LVM needs to retry the logical volume removal because it is being opened in parallel, most notably by udev as described before, it issues an error message "remove ioctl failed: Device or resource busy". If this is the case, the removal is retried several times before lvconvert fails completely.
device-mapper-persistent-date component, BZ#960284
Tools provided by the device-mapper-persistent-data package fail to operate on 4K hard-sectored metadata devices.
anaconda component
In UEFI mode, when creating a partition for software RAID, anaconda can be unable to allocate the /boot/efi mount point to the software RAID partition and fails with the "have not created /boot/efi" message in such a scenario.
kernel component, BZ#918647
Thin provisioning uses reference counts to indicate that data is shared between a thin volume and snapshots of the thin volume. There is a known issue with the way reference counts are managed in the case when a discard is issued to a thin volume that has snapshots. Creating snapshots of a thin volume and then issuing discards to the thin volume can therefore result in data loss in the snapshot volumes. Users are strongly encouraged to disable discard support on the thin-pool for the time being. To do so using lvm2 while the pool is offline, use the lvchange --discard ignore <pool> command. Any discards that might be issued to thin volumes will be ignored.
kernel component
Storage that reports a discard_granularity that is not a power of two will cause the kernel to improperly issue discard requests to the underlying storage. This results in I/O errors associated with the failed discard requests. To work around the problem, if possible, do not upgrade to newer vendor storage firmware that reports discard_granularity that is not a power of two.
parted component
Users might be unable to access a partition created by parted. To work around this problem, reboot the machine.
lvm2 component, BZ#852812
When filling a thin pool to 100% by writing to thin volume device, access to all thin volumes using this thin pool can be blocked. To prevent this, try not to overfill the pool. If the pool is overfilled and this error occurs, extend the thin pool with new space to continue using the pool.
dracut component
The Qlogic QLA2xxx driver can miss some paths after booting from Storage Area Network (SAN). To workaroud this problem, run the following commands:
echo "options qla2xxx ql2xasynclogin=0" > /etc/modprobe.d/qla2xxx.conf
mkinitrd  /boot/initramfs-`uname -r`.img `uname -r` --force
lvm2 component, BZ#903411
Activating a logical volume can fail if the --thinpool and --discards options are specified on logical-volume creation. To work around this problem, manually deactivate all thin volumes related to the changed thin pool prior to running the lvchange command.
kernel component
Unloading the nfs module can cause the system to terminate unexpectedly if the fsx utility was ran with NFSv4.1 before.
device-mapper-multipath component
When the multipathd service is not running, failed devices will not be restored. However, the multipath command gives no indication that multipathd is not running. Users can unknowingly set up multipath devices without starting the multipathd service, keeping failed paths from automatically getting restored. Make sure to start multipathing by
  • either running:
    ~]# mpathconf --enable
    ~]# service multipathd start
    
  • or:
    ~]# chkconfig multipathd on
    ~]# service multipathd start
    
multipathd will automatically start on boot, and multipath devices will automatically restore failed paths.
lvm2 component, BZ#837603
When the administrator disables use of the lvmetad daemon in the lvm.conf file, but the daemon is still running, the cached metadata are remembered until the daemon is restarted. However, if the use_lvmetad parameter in lvm.conf is reset to 1 without an intervening lvmetad restart, the cached metadata can be incorrect. Consequently, VG metadata can be overwritten with previous versions. To work around this problem, stop the lvmedat daemon manually when disabling use_lvmetad in lvm.conf. The daemon can only be restarted after use_lvmetad has been set to 1. To recover from an out-of-sync lvmetad cache, execute the pvscan --cache command or restart lvmetad. To restore metadata to correct versions, use vgcfrestore with a corresponding file in /etc/lvm/archive.
lvm2 component, BZ#563927
Due to the limitations of the LVM 'mirror' segment type, it is possible to encounter a deadlock situation when snapshots are created of mirrors. The deadlock can occur if snapshot changes (e.g. creation, resizing or removing) happen at the same time as a mirror device failure. In this case, the mirror blocks I/O until LVM can respond to the failure, but the snapshot is holding the LVM lock while trying to read the mirror.
If the user wishes to use mirroring and take snapshots of those mirrors, then it is recommended to use the 'raid1' segment type for the mirrored logical volume instead. This can be done by adding the additional arguments '--type raid1' to the command that creates the mirrored logical volume, as follows:
~]$ lvcreate --type raid1 -m 1 -L 1G -n my_mirror my_vg
kernel component, BZ#606260
The NFSv4 server in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 currently allows clients to mount using UDP and advertises NFSv4 over UDP with rpcbind. However, this configuration is not supported by Red Hat and violates the RFC 3530 standard.
lvm2 component
The pvmove command cannot currently be used to move mirror devices. However, it is possible to move mirror devices by issuing a sequence of two commands. For mirror images, add a new image on the destination PV and then remove the mirror image on the source PV:
~]$ lvconvert -m +1 <vg/lv> <new PV>
~]$ lvconvert -m -1 <vg/lv> <old PV>
Mirror logs can be handled in a similar fashion:
~]$ lvconvert --mirrorlog core <vg/lv>
~]$ lvconvert --mirrorlog disk <vg/lv> <new PV>
or
~]$ lvconvert --mirrorlog mirrored <vg/lv> <new PV>
~]$ lvconvert --mirrorlog disk <vg/lv> <old PV>

6.6. Networking

kernel component
In cluster environment, the multicast traffic from the guest to a host can be unreliable. To work around this problem, enable multicast_querier for the bridge. The setting is located in the /sys/class/net/<bridge_name>/bridge/multicast_querier file. Note that if the setting is not available, the problem should not occur.
kernel component
A missing part of the bcma driver causes the brcmsmac driver not to load automatically when the bcma driver scans the for devices. This causes the kernel not to load the brcmsmac module automatically on boot. Symptoms can be confirmed by running the lspci -v command for the device and noting the driver to be bmca, not brcmsmac. To load the driver manually, run modprobe brcmsmac on the command line.
389-ds-base component
Under certain conditions, when the server is processing multiple outgoing replication or windows sync agreements using the TLS or SSL protocol, and processing incoming client requests that use TLS or SSL and Simple Paged Results, the server becomes unresponsive to new incoming client requests. The dirsrv service will stop responding to new incoming client requests. A restart of the dirsrv service is required to restore service.
kernel component, BZ#1003475
When some Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch ports connected to the bfa host bus adapter go offline and then return in the online state, the bfa port may not re-establish the connection with the switch. This is due to a failure of the bfa driver's retry logic when interacting with certain switches. To work around this problem, reset the bfa link. This can be done either by running:
]# echo 1 > /sys/class/fc_host/host/issue_lip
or by running:
]# modprobe -r bfa && modprobe bfa
anaconda component, BZ#984129
For HP systems running in HP FlexFabric mode, the designated iSCSI function can only be used for iSCSI offload related operations and will not be able to perform any other Layer 2 networking tasks, for example, DHCP. In the case of iSCSI boot from SAN, the same SAN MAC address is exposed to both the corresponding ifconfig record and the iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT), therefore, Anaconda will skip the network selection prompt and will attempt to acquire the IP address as specified by iBFT. If DHCP is desired, Anaconda will attempt to acquire DHCP using this iSCSI function, which will fail and Anaconda will then try to acquire DHCP indefinitely. To work around this problem, if DHCP is desired, the user must use the asknetwork installation parameter and provide a "dummy" static IP address to the corresponding network interface of the iSCSI function. This prevents Anaconda from entering an infinite loop and allows it to request the iSCSI offload function to perform DHCP acquisition instead.
iscsi-initiator-utils component, BZ#825185
If the corresponding network interface has not been brought up by dracut or the tools from the iscsi-initiator-utils package, this prevents the correct MAC address from matching the offload interface, and host bus adapter (HBA) mode will not work without manual intervention to bring the corresponding network interface up. To work around this problem, the user must select the corresponding Layer 2 network interface when anaconda prompts the user to choose "which network interface to install through". This will inherently bring up the offload interface for the installation.
kernel component
When an igb link us up, the following ethtool fields display incorrect values as follows:
  • Supported ports: [ ] - for example, an empty bracket can be displayed.
  • Supported pause frame use: No - however, pause frame is supported.
  • Supports auto-negotiation: No - auto-negotiation is supported.
  • Advertised pause frame use: No - advertised pause frame is turned on.
  • Advertised auto-negotiation: No - advertised auto-negotiation is turned on.
  • Speed: Unknown! - the speed is known and can be verified using the dmesg tool.
linuxptp component
End-to-End (E2E) slaves that communicated with an E2E master once can synchronize to Peer-to-Peer (P2P) masters and vice versa. The slaves cannot update their path delay value because E2E ports reject peer delay requests from P2P ports. However, E2E ports accept SYNC messages from P2P ports and the slaves keep updating clock frequency based on undesired offset values that are calculated by using the old path delay value. Therefore, a time gap will occur if the master port is started with an incorrect delay mechanism. The "delay request on P2P" or "pdelay_req on E2E port" message can appear. To work around these problems, use a single delay mechanism for one PTP communication path. Also, because E2E and P2P mismatch can trigger a time gap of slave clock, pay attention to the configuration when starting or restarting a node on a running domain.
samba4 component, BZ#878168
If configured, the Active Directory (AD) DNS server returns IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of an AD server. If the FreeIPA server cannot connect to the AD server with an IPv6 address, running the ipa trust-add command will fail even if it would be possible to use IPv4. To work around this problem, add the IPv4 address of the AD server to the /etc/hosts file. In this case, the FreeIPA server will use only the IPv4 address and executing ipa trust-add will be successful.
kernel component
Destroying the root port before any NPIV ports can cause unexpected system behavior, including a full system crash. Note that one instance where the root port is destroyed before the NPIV ports is when the system is shut down. To work around this problem, destroy NPIV ports before destroying the root port that the NPIV ports were created on. This means that for each created NPIV port, the user should write to the sysfs vport_delete interface to delete that NPIV port. This should be done before the root port is destroyed. Users are advised to script the NPIV port deletion and configure the system such that the script is executed before the fcoe service is stopped, in the shutdown sequence.
kernel component
A Linux LIO FCoE target causes the bfa driver to reset all FCoE targets which might lead to data corruption on LUN. To avoid these problems, do not use the bfa driver with a Linux FCoE target.
NetworkManager component, BZ#896198
A GATEWAY setting in the /etc/sysconfig/network file causes NetworkManager to assign that gateway to all interfaces with static IP addresses, even if their configuration did not specify a gateway or specified a different gateway. Interfaces have the incorrect gateway information and the wrong interface may have the default route. Instead of using GATEWAY in /etc/sysconfig/network to specify which interface receives the default route, set DEFROUTE=no in each ifcfg file that should not have the default route. Any interface connected using configuration from an ifcfg file containing DEFROUTE=no will never receive the default route.
kernel component
Typically, on platforms with no Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) hardware the user can see the following message the on the boot console and in dmesg log:
Could not set up I/O space
This message can be safely ignored, unless the system really does have IPMI hardware. In that case, the message indicates that the IPMI hardware could not be initialized. In order to support Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) opregion access to IPMI functionality early in the boot, the IPMI driver has been statically linked with the kernel image. This means that the IPMI driver is "loaded" whether or not there is any hardware. The IPMI driver will try to initialize the IPMI hardware, but if there is no IPMI hardware present on the booting platform, the driver will print error messages on the console and in the dmesg log. Some of these error messages do not identify themselves as having been issued by the IPMI driver, so they can appear to be serious, when they are harmless.
kernel component
Shutting down the fcoe-target service while the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) can lead to a kernel crash. Please minimize FCoE traffic before stopping or restarting this service.
fcoe-utils component
After an ixgbe Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) session is created, server reboot can cause some or all of the FCoE sessions to not be created automatically. To work around this problem, follow the following steps (assuming that eth0 is the missing NIC for the FCoE session):
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 up
sleep 5
dcbtool sc eth0 dcb on
sleep 5
dcbtool sc eth0 pfc e:1 a:1 w:1
dcbtool sc eth0 app:fcoe e:1 a:1 w:1
service fcoe restart
libibverbs component
The InfiniBand UD transport test utility could become unresponsive when the ibv_ud_pingpong command was used with a packet size of 2048 or greater. UD is limited to no more than the smallest MTU of any point in the path between point A and B, which is between 0 and 4096 given that the largest MTU supported (but not the smallest nor required) is 4096. If the underlying Ethernet is jumbo frame capable, and with a 4096 IB MTU on an RoCE device, the max packet size that can be used with UD is 4012 bytes.
bind-dyndb-ldap component
IPA creates a new DNS zone in two separate steps. When the new zone is created, it is invalid for a short period of time. A/AAAA records for the name server belonging to the new zone are created after this delay. Sometimes, BIND attempts to load this invalid zone and fails. In such a case, reload BIND by running either rndc reload or service named restart.
selinux-policy component
SELinux can prevent the nmbd service from writing into the /var/, which breaks NetBIOS name resolution and leads to SELinux AVC denials.
kernel component
The latest version of the sfc NIC driver causes lower UDP and TX performance with large amounts of fragmented UDP packets. This problem can be avoided by setting a constant interrupt moderation period (not adaptive moderation) on both sides, sending and receiving.
kernel component
Some network interface cards (NICs) may not get an IPv4 address assigned after the system is rebooted. To work around this issue, add the following line to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface> file:
LINKDELAY=10
NetworkManager component, BZ#758076
If a Certificate Authority (CA) certificate is not selected when configuring an 802.1x or WPA-Enterprise connection, a dialog appears indicating that a missing CA certificate is a security risk. This dialog presents two options: ignore the missing CA certificate and proceed with the insecure connection, or choose a CA certificate. If the user elects to choose a CA certificate, this dialog disappears and the user may select the CA certificate in the original configuration dialog.
samba component
Current Samba versions shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are not able to fully control the user and group database when using the ldapsam_compat back end. This back end was never designed to run a production LDAP and Samba environment for a long period of time. The ldapsam_compat back end was created as a tool to ease migration from historical Samba releases (version 2.2.x) to Samba version 3 and greater using the new ldapsam back end and the new LDAP schema. The ldapsam_compat back end lack various important LDAP attributes and object classes in order to fully provide full user and group management. In particular, it cannot allocate user and group IDs. In the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Reference Guide, it is pointed out that this back end is likely to be deprecated in future releases. Refer to Samba's documentation for instructions on how to migrate existing setups to the new LDAP schema.
When you are not able to upgrade to the new LDAP schema (though upgrading is strongly recommended and is the preferred solution), you may work around this issue by keeping a dedicated machine running an older version of Samba (v2.2.x) for the purpose of user account management. Alternatively, you can create user accounts with standard LDIF files. The important part is the assignment of user and group IDs. In that case, the old Samba 2.2 algorithmic mapping from Windows RIDs to Unix IDs is the following: user RID = UID * 2 + 1000, while for groups it is: group RID = GID * 2 + 1001. With these workarounds, users can continue using the ldapsam_compat back end with their existing LDAP setup even when all the above restrictions apply.
kernel component
Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 defaults to using Strict Reverse Path filtering, packets are dropped by default when the route for outbound traffic differs from the route of incoming traffic. This is in line with current recommended practice in RFC3704. For more information about this issue please refer to /usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-<version>/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt and https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/53031.

6.7. Security

kernel component
When stopping the ipsec daemon, error messages about modules being in use can occur.
openssl component, BZ#1022002
The external Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) New Instructions (AES-NI) engine is no longer available in openssl; the engine is now built-in and therefore no longer needs to be manually enabled.

6.8. Clustering

corosync component
The redundant ring feature of corosync is not fully supported in combination with InfiniBand or Distributed Lock Manager (DLM). A double ring failure can cause both rings to break at the same time on different nodes. In addition, DLM is not functional if ring0 is down.
lvm2 component, BZ#814779
Clustered environment is not supported by lvmetad at the moment. If global/use_lvmetad=1 is used together with global/locking_type=3 configuration setting (clustered locking), the use_lvmetad setting is automatically overriden to 0 and lvmetad is not used in this case at all. Also, the following warning message is displayed:
WARNING: configuration setting use_lvmetad overriden to 0 due to locking_type 3. Clustered environment not supported by lvmetad yet.
luci component, BZ#615898
luci will not function with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 clusters unless each cluster node has ricci version 0.12.2-14.

6.9. Authentication

ipa component, BZ#1024744
OpenLDAP and 389 Directory Server treat the grace logins differently. 389 Directory Server treats them as "number of grace logins left" while OpenLDAP treats them as "number of grace logins used". Currently the SSSD only handles the semantics used by 389 Directory server. As a result, when using OpenLDAP server, the grace password warning might be incorrect.
ipa component, BZ#1024959
The Identity Management server does not write the initial user password correctly to password history. As a consequence, when a new Identity Management user is created and a password is generated for him, the first time that user changes the password, the value of the first password is disregarded when the password policy plug-in checks the password history. This means that user can "change" the initial password to the same value as the previous one, with no regards to the configured password history. Password history is applied correctly to all subsequent password changes.
ipa component, BZ#1009102
When an Identity Management server installed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 is updated to the version provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 or 6.5, the new pbac permission "Write DNS Configuration" is created without any of the required object classes. Consequently, the permission may not show up on the Identity Management Web UI permission page or when the --sizelimit parameter is used for the CLI permission-find command. The permission is still accessible using the command line when the --sizelimit option is not specified. To work around this problem, run the following command on the server to trigger the DNS permission update process again and fix the list of permission object classes:
]# ipa-ldap-updater --ldapi /usr/share/ipa/updates/40-dns.update
This problem can also be avoided when a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 or 6.5 replica is installed or when an Identity Management server is reinstalled or upgraded.
ipa component, BZ#1015481
Identity Management administration framework API contains two checks to verify that a request on its API can be passed further:
  1. A check to see if the client API version is not higher than the server API version. If it is, the request is rejected.
  2. A check to see if the client API request does not use an attribute or a parameter unknown to the server. If it does, the request is rejected.
However, the Identity Management server performs the checks in an incorrect order: first, the attribute and parameter check is done and after that, the API version check is done. As a consequence, when a new client (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5) runs the ipa administration tool against a server with an earlier operating system (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4), the command returns a confusing error message; for example, instead of stating API compatibility, ipa outputs the following message:
]$ ipa user-show admin
ipa: ERROR: Unknown option: no_members
ipa component, BZ#1016042
The ipa-replica-manage tool contains a bug in the re-initialize command causing the MemberOf task to fail with an error under certain circumstances. When the ipa-replica-manage re-initialize command is run for a Windows Synchronization (WinSync) replication agreement, it succeeds in the re-initialization part, but fails during execution of the MemberOf task which is run after the re-initialization part. The following error is returned:
Update succeeded
Can't contact LDAP server
However, the error is harmless as running the MemberOf task is not required in this case.
sssd component, BZ#995737
SSSD fails if the entryUSN attribute of sudo rules is empty. As a result, processing of sudo rules stops instead of proceeding. To work around this problem, if the server contains any other USN-like attribute, the user can set the attribute in the configuration file using:
ldap_rootdse_last_usn = attr_name
ldap_entry_usn = attr_name
ipa component, BZ#983237
ipa-adtrust-install, an Identity Management Active Directory Trust configuration tool, does not explicitly specify authentication mechanism when performing Active Directory Trust configuration changes. When the user specifies the default LDAP authentication mechanism other than the expected default (for example, by setting the SASL_MECH configuration option to GSSAPI in the LDAP configuration file for the root user, .ldaprc), ipa-adtrust-install will not use the expected authentication mechanism and will fail to configure some of the parts of the Active Directory Integration feature, a crash of samba daemon (smbd) can occur or the user will be unable to use the feature. To work around this problem, remove any user default settings related to LDAP authentication mechanism from the .ldaprc file. The ipa-adtrust-install installer will then successfully configure the Active Directory integration feature.
ipa component, BZ#894388
The Identity Management installer configures all integrated services to listen on all interfaces. The administrator has no means to instruct the Identity Management installer to listen only on chosen interfaces even though the installer requires a valid interface IP address as one installation parameter. To work around this problem, change service configuration after Identity Management installation.
ipa component, BZ#894378
Identity Management LDAP permission manipulation plugin validates subtree and filter permission specifiers as mutually exclusive even though it is a valid combination in the underlying LDAP Access Control Instruction (ACI). Permissions with filter and subtree specifiers can be neither created nor modified. This affects for example the Add Automount Keys permission which cannot be modified.
ipa component, BZ#817080
In some cases the certificates tracked by certmonger are not cleared when running the ipa-server-install --uninstall command. This will cause a subsequent re-installation to fail with an unexpected error.
sssd component, BZ#892604
The ssh_cache utility sets the DEBUG level after it processes the command-line parameters. If the command-line parameters cannot be processed, the utility prints DEBUG lines that are not supposed to be printed by default. To avoid this, correct parameters must be used.
sssd component, BZ#891647
It is possible to specify the enumerate=true value in the sssd.conf file to access all users in the system. However, using enumerate=true is not recommended in large environments as this can lead to high CPU consumption. As a result, operations like login or logout can be slowed down.
ipa component, BZ#888579
The Identity Management server processes Kerberos Password Expiration Time field as a 32-bit integer. If Maximum Lifetime of a user password in Identity Management Password Policy is set to a value causing the resulting Kerberos Password Expiration Time timestamp to exceed 32 bits and to overflow, the passwords that are being changed are configured with an expiration time that lies in the past and are always rejected. To ensure that new user passwords are valid and can be changed properly, do not set password Maximum Lifetime in Identity Management Password Policy to values that would cause the Kerberos Password Expiration Time timestamp to exceed 32 bits; that is, passwords that would expire after 2038-01-19. At the moment, recommended values for the Maximum Lifetime field are numbers lower than 9000 days.
sssd component, BZ#785877
When reconnecting to an LDAP server, SSSD does not check it was re-initialized during the downtime. If the server was re-initialized during the downtime and was filled with completely different data, SSSD does not update its database. As a consequence, the user can get invalid information from SSSD. To work around this problem:
  1. stop SSSD before reconnecting to the re-initialized server;
  2. clear the SSSD caches manually before reconnecting;
  3. start SSSD.
krb5 component
In environments where entropy is scarce, the kadmind tool can take longer to initialize after startup than it did in previous releases as it attempts to read data from the /dev/random file and seed its internal random number generator (RNG). Clients which attempt to connect to the kadmin service can time out and fail with a GSS-API or Kerberos error. After the service completely finishes initializing itself, it will process messages received from now-disconnected clients and can log clock-skew or decrypt-integrity-check-failed errors for those connections. To work around this problem, use a service such as rngd to seed the system RNG using hardware sources of entropy.
ipa component, BZ#887193
The Identity Management server in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 introduced a technical preview of SELinux user mapping feature, which enabled a mapping of SELinux users to users managed by the Identity Management based on custom rules. However, the default configured SELinux user (guest_u:s0) used when no custom rule matches is too constraining. An Identity Management user authenticating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 can be assigned the too constraining SELinux user in which case a login through graphical session would always fail. To work around this problem, change a too constraining default SELinux user in the Identity Management server from guest_u:s0 to a more relaxed value unconfined_u:s0-s0:c0.c1023:
kinit admin
ipa config-mod ipaselinuxusermapdefault=unconfined_u:s0-s0:c0.c1023
An unconfined SELinux user will be now assigned to the Identity Management user by default, which will allow the user to successfully authenticate through graphical interface.
ipa component, BZ#761574
When attempting to view a host in the web UI, the following message can appear:
Certificate operation cannot be completed: Unable to communicate with CMS (Unauthorized)
Attempting to delete installed certificates through the web UI or command-line interface can fail with the same error message. To work around this problem, run the following command:
~]# yum downgrade ipa-server libipa_hbac libipa_hbac-python ipa-python ipa-client ipa-admintools ipa-server-selinux
ipa component
When upgrading the ipa-server package using anaconda, the following error message is logged in the upgrade.log file:
/sbin/restorecon:  lstat(/var/lib/pki-ca/publish*) failed:  No such file or directory
This problem does not occur when using yum.
sssd component
In the Identity Manager subdomain code, a User Principal Name (UPN) is by default built from the SAM Account Name and Active Directory trust users, that is user@DOMAIN. The UPN can be changed to differ from the UPN in Active Directory, however only the default format, user@DOMAIN, is supported.
sssd component, BZ#805921
Sometimes, group members may not be visible when running the getent group groupname command. This can be caused by an incorrect ldap_schema in the [domain/DOMAINNAME] section of the sssd.conf file. SSSD supports three LDAP schema types: RFC 2307, RFC 2307bis, and IPA. By default, SSSD uses the more common RFC 2307 schema. The difference between RFC 2307 and RFC 2307bis is the way which group membership is stored in the LDAP server. In an RFC 2307 server, group members are stored as the multi-valued memberuid attribute which contains the name of the users that are members. In an RFC2307bis server, group members are stored as the multi-valued attribute member (or sometimes uniqueMember) which contains the DN of the user or group that is a member of this group. RFC2307bis allows nested groups to be maintained as well.
When encountering this problem:
  • add ldap_schema = rfc2307bis in the sssd.conf file,
  • detele the /var/lib/sss/db/cache_DOMAINNAME.ldb file,
  • and restart SSSD.
If the workaround does not work, add ldap_group_member = uniqueMember in the sssd.conf file, delete the cache file and restart SSSD.
Identity Management component, BZ#826973
When Identity Management is installed with its CA certificate signed by an external CA, the installation is processed in 2 stages. In the first stage, a CSR is generated to be signed by an external CA. The second stage of the installation then accepts a file with the new signed certificate for the Identity Management CA and a certificate of the external CA. During the second stage of the installation, a signed Identity Management CA certificate subject is validated. However, there is a bug in the certificate subject validation procedure and its default value (O=$REALM, where $REALM is the realm of the new Identity Management installation) is never pulled. Consequently, the second stage of the installation process always fails unless the --subject option is specified. To work around this issue, add the following option for the second stage of the installation: --subject "O=$REALM" where $REALM is the realm of the new Identity Management installation. If a custom subject was used for the first stage of the installation, use its value instead. Using this work around, the certificate subject validation procedure succeeds and the installation continues as expected.
Identity Management component, BZ#822350
When a user is migrated from a remote LDAP, the user's entry in the Directory Server does not contain Kerberos credentials needed for a Kerberos login. When the user visits the password migration page, Kerberos credentials are generated for the user and logging in via Kerberos authentication works as expected. However, Identity Management does not generate the credentials correctly when the migrated password does not follow the password policy set on the Identity Management server. Consequently, when the password migration is done and a user tries to log in via Kerberos authentication, the user is prompted to change the password as it does not follow the password policy, but the password change is never successful and the user is not able to use Kerberos authentication. To work around this issue, an administrator can reset the password of a migrated user with the ipa passwd command. When reset, user's Kerberos credentials in the Directory Server are properly generated and the user is able to log in using Kerberos authentication.
Identity Management component
In the Identity Management webUI, deleting a DNS record may, under come circumstances, leave it visible on the page showing DNS records. This is only a display issue and does not affect functionality of DNS records in any way.
Identity Management component, BZ#790513
The ipa-client package does not install the policycoreutils package as its dependency, which may cause install/uninstall issues when using the ipa-client-install setup script. To work around this issue, install the policycoreutils package manually:
~]# yum install policycoreutils
Identity Management component, BZ#813376
Updating the Identity Management LDAP configuration via the ipa-ldap-updater fails with a traceback error when executed by a non-root user due to the SASL EXTERNAL bind requiring root privileges. To work around this issue, run the aforementioned command as the root user.
Identity Management component, BZ#794882
With netgroups, when adding a host as a member that Identity Management does not have stored as a host already, that host is considered to be an external host. This host can be controlled with netgroups, but Identity Management has no knowledge of it. Currently, there is no way to use the netgroup-find option to search for external hosts.
Also, note that when a host is added to a netgroup as an external host, rather than being added in Identity Management as an external host, that host is not automatically converted within the netgroup rule.
Identity Management component, BZ#786629
Because a permission does not provide write access to an entry, delegation does not work as expected. The 389 Directory Server (389-ds) distinguishes access between entries and attributes. For example, an entry can be granted add or delete access, whereas an attribute can be granted read, search, and write access. To grant write access to an entry, the list of writable attributes needs to be provided. The filter, subtree, and other options are used to target those entries which are writable. Attributes define which part(s) of those entries are writable. As a result, the list of attributes will be writable to members of the permission.
sssd component, BZ#808063
The manpage entry for the ldap_disable_paging option in the sssd-ldap man page does not indicate that it accepts the boolean values True or False, and defaulting to False if it is not explicitly specified.
Identity Management component, BZ#812127
Identity Management relies on the LDAP schema to know what type of data to expect in a given attribute. If, in certain situations (such as replication), data that does not meet those expectations is inserted into an attribute, Identity Management will not be able to handle the entry, and LDAP tools have do be used to manually clean up that entry.
Identity Management component, BZ#812122
Identity Management sudo commands are not case sensitive. For example, executing the following commands will result in the latter one failing due to the case insensitivity:
~]$ ipa sudocmd-add /usr/bin/X
⋮
~]$ ipa sudocmd-add /usr/bin/x
ipa: ERROR: sudo command with name "/usr/bin/x" already exists
Identity Management component
When an Identity Management server is installed with a custom hostname that is not resolvable, the ipa-server-install command should add a record to the static hostname lookup table in /etc/hosts and enable further configuration of Identity Management integrated services. However, a record is not added to /etc/hosts when an IP address is passed as an CLI option and not interactively. Consequently, Identity Management installation fails because integrated services that are being configured expect the Identity Management server hostname to be resolvable. To work around this issue, complete one of the following:
  • Run the ipa-server-install without the --ip-address option and pass the IP address interactively.
  • Add a record to /etc/hosts before the installation is started. The record should contain the Identity Management server IP address and its full hostname (the hosts(5) man page specifies the record format).
As a result, the Identity Management server can be installed with a custom hostname that is not resolvable.
sssd component
Upgrading SSSD from the version provided in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 to the version shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 may fail due to a bug in the dependent library libldb. This failure occurs when the SSSD cache contains internal entries whose distinguished name contains the \, character sequence. The most likely example of this is for an invalid memberUID entry to appear in an LDAP group of the form:
memberUID: user1,user2
memberUID is a multi-valued attribute and should not have multiple users in the same attribute.
If the upgrade issue occurs, identifiable by the following debug log message:
(Wed Nov  2 15:18:21 2011) [sssd] [ldb] (0): A transaction is still active in
ldb context [0xaa0460] on /var/lib/sss/db/cache_<DOMAIN>.ldb
remove the /var/lib/sss/db/cache_<DOMAIN>.ldb file and restart SSSD.

Warning

Removing the /var/lib/sss/db/cache_<DOMAIN>.ldb file purges the cache of all entries (including cached credentials).
sssd component, BZ#751314
When a group contains certain incorrect multi-valued memberUID values, SSSD fails to sanitize the values properly. The memberUID value should only contain one username. As a result, SSSD creates incorrect users, using the broken memberUID values as their usernames. This, for example, causes problems during cache indexing.
Identity Management component
Two Identity Management servers, both with a CA (Certificate Authority) installed, use two replication replication agreements. One is for user, group, host, and other related data. Another replication agreement is established between the CA instances installed on the servers. If the CA replication agreement is broken, the Identity Management data is still shared between the two servers, however, because there is no replication agreement between the two CAs, issuing a certificate on one server will cause the other server to not recognize that certificate, and vice versa.
Identity Management component
The Identity Management (ipa) package cannot be build with a 6ComputeNode subscription.
sssd component, BZ#741264
Active Directory performs certain LDAP referral-chasing that is incompatible with the referral mechanism included in the openldap libraries. Notably, Active Directory sometimes attempts to return a referral on an LDAP bind attempt, which used to cause a hang, and is now denied by the openldap libraries. As a result, SSSD may suffer from performance issues and occasional failures resulting in missing information.
To work around this issue, disable referral-chasing by setting the following parameter in the [domain/DOMAINNAME] section of the /etc/sssd/sssd.conf file:
ldap_referrals = false

6.10. Devices

kernel component
When using large block size (1MB), the tape driver sometimes returns an EBUSY error. To work around this problem, use a smaller block size, that is 256KB.
kernel component
On some of the older Broadcom tg3 devices, the default Maximum Read Request Size (MRRS) value of 512 byte is known to cause lower performance. It is because these devices perform direct memory access (DMA) requests serially. 1500-byte ethernet packet will be broken into 3 PCIE read requests using 512 byte MRRS. When using a higher MRRS value, the DMA transfer can be faster as fewer requests will be needed. However, the MRRS value is meant to be tuned by system software and not by the driver. PCIE Base spec 3.0 section 7.8.4 contains an implementation note that illustrates how system software might tune the MRRS for all devices in the system. As a result, Broadcom modified the tg3 driver to remove the code that sets the MRRS to 4K bytes so that any value selected by system software (BIOS) will be preserved.
kernel component
The Brocade BFA Fibre Channel and FCoE driver does not currently support dynamic recognition of Logical Unit addition or removal using the sg3_utils utilities (for example, the sg_scan command) or similar functionality. Please consult Brocade directly for a Brocade equivalent of this functionality.
kexec-tools component
Starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and later, kexec kdump supports dumping core to the Brtfs file system. However, note that because the findfs utility in busybox does not support Btrfs yet, UUID/LABEL resolving is not functional. Avoid using the UUID/LABEL syntax when dumping core to Btrfs file systems.
trace-cmd component
The trace-cmd service does not start on 64-bit PowerPC and IBM System z systems because the sys_enter and sys_exit events do not get enabled on the aforementioned systems.
trace-cmd component
trace-cmd's subcommand, report, does not work on IBM System z systems. This is due to the fact that the CONFIG_FTRACE_SYSCALLS parameter is not set on IBM System z systems.
libfprint component
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 only has support for the first revision of the UPEK Touchstrip fingerprint reader (USB ID 147e:2016). Attempting to use a second revision device may cause the fingerprint reader daemon to crash. The following command returns the version of the device being used in an individual machine:
~]$ lsusb -v -d 147e:2016 | grep bcdDevice
kernel component
The Emulex Fibre Channel/Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) driver in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 does not support DH-CHAP authentication. DH-CHAP authentication provides secure access between hosts and mass storage in Fibre-Channel and FCoE SANs in compliance with the FC-SP specification. Note, however that the Emulex driver (lpfc) does support DH-CHAP authentication on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, from version 5.4. Future Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 releases may include DH-CHAP authentication.
kernel component
The recommended minimum HBA firmware revision for use with the mpt2sas driver is "Phase 5 firmware" (that is, with version number in the form 05.xx.xx.xx). Note that following this recommendation is especially important on complex SAS configurations involving multiple SAS expanders.

6.11. Kernel

kernel component
Sun Fire X4500 data server enumerates the e1000 card with Peripheral Component Interconnect Extended (PCI-X) and enables 64-bit direct memory access (DMA), however, 64-bit DMA is not fully supported on this hardware. If possible, disable 64-bit DMA in BIOS.
grubby component
Use of multiboot images makes discerning different image types problematic during kernel updates. As a consequence, using the tboot package and multiple types of kernels at the same time does not work properly. If, for example, tboot is in use and the kernel-debug package is installed, bootloader configuration can sometimes reflect an incorrect image list. To avoid this, do not use the kernel-debug on a system utilizing tboot, or vice versa. If such a situation is unavoidable, manually verify that the bootloader configuration is reasonable after each update before rebooting.
kexec-tools component
When the debug kernel is installed and also used as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kdump kernel, the reserved kdump memory must be increased to a minimum of 256 MB. To assure this setting, start the system-config-kdump tool, modify the kdump memory, and reboot your Linux instance. Alternatively, you can configure a particular kernel that is always used as the kdump kernel, independently of the running kernel. For more information, consult the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Deployment Guide.
kernel component
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 changed the maximum read/write socket memory default value to be higher, allowing for better performance on some machines. It was observed that if the values of ?mem_max are not symmetrical between two machines, the performance can be negatively affected. To work around this problem, adjust the value of ?mem_max to be equal across all Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems in the network.
kabi-whitelists component
The vxfs module might not work properly on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and later because of the broken radix_tree_gang_lookup_slot symbol. Consult Symantec should you require a workaround for this issue.
kernel component
Enabling TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) on TAP interface may cause low throughput when the uplink is a high-speed interface. To improve throughput, turn off TSO on the tap interface of the virtual machine.
kernel component
When using Chelsio's iSCSI HBAs for an iSCSI root partition, the first boot after install fails. This occurs because Chelsio's iSCSI HBA is not properly detected. To work around this issue, users must add the iscsi_firmware parameter to grub's kernel command line. This will signal to dracut to boot from the iSCSI HBA.
kernel component
The installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 i386 and later may occasionally fail. To work around this issue, add the following parameter to the kernel command line:
vmalloc=256MB
kernel component
If a device reports an error, while it is opened (via the open(2) system call), then the device is closed (via the close(2) system call), and the /dev/disk/by-id link for the device may be removed. When the problem on the device that caused the error is resolved, the by-id link is not re-created. To work around this issue, run the following command:
~]# echo 'change' > /sys/class/block/sdX/uevent
kernel component
When an HBA that uses the mpt2sas driver is connected to a storage using an SAS switch LSI SAS 6160, the driver may become unresponsive during Controller Fail Drive Fail (CFDF) testing. This is due to faulty firmware that is present on the switch. To fix this issue, use a newer version (14.00.00.00 or later) of firmware for the LSI SAS 6160 switch.
kernel component, BZ#745713
In some cases, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 guests running fully-virtualized under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 experience a time drift or fail to boot. In other cases, drifting may start after migration of the virtual machine to a host with different speed. This is due to limitations in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Xen hypervisor. To work around this, add the nohpet parameter or, alternatively, the clocksource=jiffies parameter to the kernel command line of the guest. Or, if running under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 or newer, locate the guest configuration file for the guest and add the hpet=0 parameter in it.
kernel component
On some systems, Xen full-virt guests may print the following message when booting:
WARNING: BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of memory, losing <number>MB of RAM
It is possible to avoid the memory trimming by using the disable_mtrr_trim kernel command line option.
kernel component
The perf record command becomes unresponsive when specifying a tracepoint event and a hardware event at the same time.
kernel component
On 64-bit PowerPC, the following command may cause kernel panic:
~]# ./perf record -agT -e sched:sched_switch -F 100 -- sleep 3
kernel component
Applications are increasingly using more than 1024 file descriptors. It is not recommended to increase the default soft limit of file descriptors because it may break applications that use the select() call. However, it is safe to increase the default hard limit; that way, applications requiring a large amount of file descriptors can increase their soft limit without needing root privileges and without any user intervention.
kernel component
In network only use of Brocade Converged Network Adapters (CNAs), switches that are not properly configured to work with Brocade FCoE functionality can cause a continuous linkup/linkdown condition. This causes continuous messages on the host console:
bfa xxxx:xx:xx.x: Base port (WWN = xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) lost fabric connectivity
To work around this issue, unload the Brocade bfa driver.
kernel component
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, a legacy bug in the PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 5 (PERC5) which causes the kdump kernel to fail to scan for scsi devices. It is usually triggered when a large amounts of I/O operations are pending on the controller in the first kernel before performing a kdump.
kernel component, BZ#679262
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and later, due to security concerns, addresses in /proc/kallsyms and /proc/modules show all zeros when accessed by a non-root user.
kernel component
Superfluous information is displayed on the console due to a correctable machine check error occurring. This information can be safely ignored by the user. Machine check error reporting can be disabled by using the nomce kernel boot option, which disables machine check error reporting, or the mce=ignore_ce kernel boot option, which disables correctable machine check error reporting.
kernel component
The order in which PCI devices are scanned may change from one major Red Hat Enterprise Linux release to another. This may result in device names changing, for example, when upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to 6. You must confirm that a device you refer to during installation, is the intended device.
One way to assure the correctness of device names is to, in some configurations, determine the mapping from the controller name to the controller's PCI address in the older release, and then compare this to the mapping in the newer release, to ensure that the device name is as expected.
The following is an example from /var/log/messages:
kernel: cciss0: <0x3230> at PCI 0000:1f:00.0 IRQ 71 using DAC
…
kernel: cciss1: <0x3230> at PCI 0000:02:00.0 IRQ 75 using DAC
If the device name is incorrect, add the pci=bfsort parameter to the kernel command line, and check again.
kernel component
The minimum firmware version for NIC adapters managed by netxen_nic is 4.0.550. This includes the boot firmware which is flashed in option ROM on the adapter itself.
kernel component
High stress on 64-bit IBM POWER series machines prevents kdump from successfully capturing the vmcore. As a result, the second kernel is not loaded, and the system becomes unresponsive.
kernel component
Triggering kdump to capture a vmcore through the network using the Intel 82575EB ethernet device in a 32 bit environment causes the networking driver to not function properly in the kdump kernel, and prevent the vmcore from being captured.
kernel component
Memory Type Range Register (MTRR) setup on some hyperthreaded machines may be incorrect following a suspend/resume cycle. This can cause graphics performance (specifically, scrolling) to slow considerably after a suspend/resume cycle.
To work around this issue, disable and then re-enable the hyperthreaded sibling CPUs around suspend/resume, for example:
#!/bin/sh
# Disable hyper-threading processor cores on suspend and hibernate, re-enable
# on resume.
# This file goes into /etc/pm/sleep.d/

case $1 in
        hibernate|suspend)
                echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
                echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
                ;;

        thaw|resume)
                echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
                echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
                ;;
esac
kernel component
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, nmi_watchdog registers with the perf subsystem. Consequently, during boot, the perf subsystem grabs control of the performance counter registers, blocking OProfile from working. To resolve this, either boot with the nmi_watchdog=0 kernel parameter set, or run the following command to disable it at run time:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog
To re-enable nmi-watchdog, use the following command
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog
kernel component, BZ#603911
Due to the way ftrace works when modifying the code during start-up, the NMI watchdog causes too much noise and ftrace can not find a quiet period to instrument the code. Consequently, machines with more than 512 CPUs will encounter issues with the NMI watchdog. Such issues will return error messages similar to BUG: NMI Watchdog detected LOCKUP and have either ftrace_modify_code or ipi_handler in the backtrace. To work around this issue, disable NMI watchdog by setting the nmi_watchdog=0 kernel parameter, or using the following command at run time:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog
kernel component
On 64-bit POWER systems the EHEA NIC driver will fail when attempting to dump a vmcore via NFS. To work around this issue, utilize other kdump facilities, for example dumping to the local file system, or dumping over SSH.
kernel component, BZ#587909
A BIOS emulated floppy disk might cause the installation or kernel boot process to hang. To avoid this, disable emulated floppy disk support in the BIOS.
kernel component
The preferred method to enable nmi_watchdog on 32-bit x86 systems is to use either nmi_watchdog=2 or nmi_watchdog=lapic parameters. The parameter nmi_watchdog=1 is not supported.
kernel component
The kernel parameter, pci=noioapicquirk, is required when installing the 32-bit variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 on HP xw9300 workstations. Note that the parameter change is not required when installing the 64-bit variant.

6.12. Desktop

gnome-panel component, BZ#1017631
The gnome-panel utility can sometimes terminate unexpectedly on 64-bit PowerPC architecture using the XDMCP protocol.
xorg-x11-drv-intel component, BZ#889574
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 graphics stacs does not support NVIDIA Optimus hardware configurations. On laptops with both Intel and NVIDIA GPUs, some or all external video ports may not function correctly when using the Intel GPU. If external video ports are needed, configure the BIOS to use the NVIDIA GPU instead of the Intel GPU if possible.
xorg-x11-drv-synaptics component, BZ#873721
Two-finger scrolling is default for devices that announce two-finger capability. However, on certain machines, although the touchpad announces two-finger capability, events generated by the device only contain a single finger position at a time and two-finger scrolling therefore does not work. To work around this problem, use edge scrolling instead.
firefox component
In certain environments, storing personal Firefox configuration files (~/.mozilla/) on an NFS share, such as when your home directory is on a NFS share, led to Firefox functioning incorrectly, for example, navigation buttons not working as expected, and bookmarks not saving. This update adds a new configuration option, storage.nfs_filesystem, that can be used to resolve this issue. If you experience this issue:
  1. Start Firefox.
  2. Type about:config into the URL bar and press the Enter key.
  3. If prompted with "This might void your warranty!", click the I'll be careful, I promise! button.
  4. Right-click in the Preference Name list. In the menu that opens, select NewBoolean.
  5. Type "storage.nfs_filesystem" (without quotes) for the preference name and then click the OK button.
  6. Select true for the boolean value and then press the OK button.
wacomcpl component, BZ#769466
The wacomcpl package has been deprecated and has been removed from the package set. The wacomcpl package provided graphical configuration of Wacom tablet settings. This functionality is now integrated into the GNOME Control Center.
acroread component
Running a AMD64 system without the sssd-client.i686 package installed, which uses SSSD for getting information about users, causes acroread to fail to start. To work around this issue, manually install the sssd-client.i686 package.
kernel component, BZ#681257
With newer kernels, such as the kernel shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, Nouveau has corrected the Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) bandwidth limits for pre-G80 NVIDIA chipsets. Consequently, the resolution auto-detected by X for some monitors may differ from that used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0.
fprintd component
When enabled, fingerprint authentication is the default authentication method to unlock a workstation, even if the fingerprint reader device is not accessible. However, after a 30 second wait, password authentication will become available.
evolution component
Evolution's IMAP backend only refreshes folder contents under the following circumstances: when the user switches into or out of a folder, when the auto-refresh period expires, or when the user manually refreshes a folder (that is, using the menu item FolderRefresh). Consequently, when replying to a message in the Sent folder, the new message does not immediately appear in the Sent folder. To see the message, force a refresh using one of the methods describe above.
anaconda component
The clock applet in the GNOME panel has a default location of Boston, USA. Additional locations are added via the applet's preferences dialog. Additionally, to change the default location, left-click the applet, hover over the desired location in the Locations section, and click the Set... button that appears.
xorg-x11-server component, BZ#623169
In some multi-monitor configurations (for example, dual monitors with both rotated), the cursor confinement code produces incorrect results. For example, the cursor may be permitted to disappear off the screen when it should not, or be prevented from entering some areas where it should be allowed to go. Currently, the only workaround for this issue is to disable monitor rotation.

6.13. Tools

ssh-keygen component
The following example in the description of the -V option in the ssh-keygen(1) manual page is incorrect:
“-4w:+4w” (valid from four weeks ago to four weeks from now)
If you set a date range in this format, the certificate is valid from four weeks ago until now.
perl-WWW-curl component
Attempting to access the CURLINFO_PRIVATE value can cause curl to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault.
freerpd component, BZ#988277
The ALSA plug-in is not supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Instead of the ALSA plug-in, use the pulseaudio plug-in. To enable it, use the --plugin rpdsnd option with the xfreerdp command without specifying which plug-in should be used; the pulseaudio plug-in will be used automatically in this case.
coolkey component, BZ#906537
Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Endpoint Cards which support both CAC and PIV interfaces might not work with the latest coolkey update; some signature operations like PKINIT can fail. To work around this problem, downgrade coolkey to the version shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3.
libreport component
Even if the stored credentials are used , the report-gtk utility can report the following error message:
Wrong settings detected for Red Hat Customer Support [..]
To work around this problem, close the dialog window; the Login=<rhn-user> and Password=<rhn-password> credentials in the /etc/libreport/plugins/rhtsupport.conf will be used in the same way they are used by report-rhtsupport.
For more information, refer to this Knowledge Base article.
vlock component
When a user password is used to lock a console with vlock, the console can only be unlocked with the user password, not the root password. That is, even if the first inserted password is incorrect, and the user is prompted to provide the root password, entering the root password fails with an error message.
libreoffice component
Libreoffice contains a number of harmless files used for testing purposes. However, on Microsoft Windows system, these files can trigger false positive alerts on various anti-virus software, such as Microsoft Security Essentials. For example, the alerts can be triggered when scanning the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ISO file.
gnome-power-manager component
When the computer runs on battery, custom brightness level is not remembered and restored if power saving features like "dim display when idle" or "reduce backlight brightness when idle" are enabled.
rsyslog component
rsyslog does not reload its configuration after a SIGHUP signal is issued. To reload the configuration, the rsyslog daemon needs to be restarted:
~]# service rsyslog restart

6.14. Documentation

release-notes component
The Release Notes document included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 and available on the Customer Portal contains incorrectly lists information about the FSTEK certification in all languages. Please consult the online English version of the Release Notes, which is the latest and most up-to-date version.
release-notes component
The Benagali (bn-IN) and Simplified Chinese (zh-CN) translations of the Release Notes included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 and on the Customer Portal contain several untranslated strings.

Chapter 7. New Packages

New freerdp packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), released under the Apache license. The xfreerdp client can connect to RDP servers such as Microsoft Windows machines, xrdp and VirtualBox.
This enhancement update adds the freerdp packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#951696)
All users who require freerdp are advised to install these new packages.
New gcc-libraries packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The new gcc-libraries packages contain various GCC runtime libraries, such as libatomic and libitm. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, libitm was a separate package that included the libitm library. The libitm package is now deprecated and replaced by the gcc-libraries packages.
This enhancement update adds the gcc-libraries packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#906241)
All users who require gcc-libraries are advised to install these new packages.
New openhpi32 packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
OpenHPI provides an open source implementation of the Service Availability Forum (SAF) Hardware Platform Interface (HPI). HPI is an abstracted interface for managing computer hardware, typically chassis- and rack-based servers. HPI includes resource modeling; access to and control over sensor, control, watchdog, and inventory data associated with resources; abstracted System Event Log interfaces; hardware events and alarms; and a managed hot swap interface. This is version 3.2 of the OpenHPI project.
This enhancement update adds the openhpi32 packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#927897)
All users who require openhpi32 are advised to install these new packages.
New p11-kit packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The p11-kit package provides a mechanism to manage PKCS#11 modules. The p11-kit-trust subpackage includes a PKCS#11 trust module that provides certificate anchors and black lists based on configuration files.
This enhancement update adds the p11-kit packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#915798)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the p11-kit package to implement the Shared System Certificates feature. If enabled by the administrator, it ensures system-wide trust store of static data that is used by crypto toolkits as input for certificate trust decisions. (BZ#977886)
These new packages had several bugs fixed during testing:
* Support for using the freebl3 library for the SHA1 and MD5 cryptographic hash functions has been added even though the hashing is done in a strictly non-cryptographic context. (BZ#983384)
* All file handles opened by p11-kit are created with the O_CLOEXEC flag, so that they are automatically closed on the execve() function and do not leak to subprocesses. (BZ#984986)
* When expanding the "$HOME" variable or the "~/" path for SUID and SGID programs, the expand_home() function returns NULL. This change allows for avoiding vulnerabilities that could occur if SUID or SGID programs accidentally trusted this environment. Also, documentation concerning the fact that user directories are not read for SUID/SGID programs has been added. (BZ#985014)
* Users need to use the standard environment $TMPDIR variable for locating the temp directory. (BZ#985017)
* If a critical module fails to initialize, module initialization stops and the user is informed about the failure. (BZ#985023)
* The p11_kit_space_strlen() function returns a "0" value for empty strings. (BZ#985416)
* Arguments of the size_t variable are correctly passed to the "p11_hash_xxx" functions. (BZ#985421)
* Changes in the code ensures that the memdup() function is not called with a zero length or NULL pointers. (BZ#985433)
All users who require the Shared System Certificates feature are advised to install these new packages.
A new ps_mem package is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The ps_mem package provides a memory usage script written in Python that calculates how much RAM is used per program. The script automatically selects the most accurate method, which is available for a particular running kernel.
This enhancement update adds the ps_mem package to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#962850)
All users who require ps_mem are advised to install this new package.
New redhat-support-lib-python and redhat-support-tool packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The redhat-support-lib-python package provides a Python library that developers can use to easily write software solutions that leverage Red Hat Access subscription services.
The redhat-support-tool utility facilitates console-based access to Red Hat's subscriber services and gives Red Hat subscribers more venues for accessing the content and services available to them as Red Hat customers. Further, it enables our customers to integrate and automate their helpdesk services with our subscription services. The capabilities of this package include:
* Red Hat Access Knowledge Base article and solution viewing from the console (formatted as man pages). * Viewing, creating, modifying, and commenting on customer support cases from the console. * Attachment uploading directly to a customer support case or to ftp://dropbox.redhat.com/ from the console. * Full proxy support (that is, FTP and HTTP proxies). * Easy listing and downloading of attachments in customer support cases from the console. * Red Hat Access Knowledge Base searching on query terms, log messages, and other parameters, and viewing search results in a selectable list. * Easy uploading of log files, text files, and other sources to the Red Hat Access automatic problem determination engine for diagnosis. * Various other support-related commands.
Detailed usage information for the tool can be found in the Red Hat Customer Portal at https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/445443
This enhancement update adds the redhat-support-lib-python and redhat-support-tool packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#987159, BZ#869395, BZ#880776, BZ#987171, BZ#987169, BZ#987163)
All users who require redhat-support-lib-python and redhat-support-tool are advised to install these new packages.
A new sapconf package is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The sapconf package contains a script that checks the basic installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and modifies it according to SAP requirements. The script ensures that all necessary packages are installed and that configuration parameters are set correctly to run SAP software.
This enhancement update adds the sapconf package to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. This package is available through the "Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Business Applications" channel. (BZ#910838)
All users who running SAP software on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are advised to install this new package.
New snappy packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Snappy is a compression and decompression library that aims for very high speeds and reasonable compression.
This enhancement update adds the snappy packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#903090)
All users who require snappy are advised to install these new packages.
New xorg-x11-glamor packages are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The glamor module is an open-source 2D graphics common driver for the X Window System as implemented by X.org. It supports a variety of graphics chip sets which have OpenGL, EGL or GBM support.
This enhancement update adds the xorg-x11-glamor packages to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The glamor library is provided to support new AMD GPU hardware and can be used by the DDX driver to implement acceleration using the OpenGL driver. Some new hardware, such as AMD HD7xxx Series, needs glamor for acceleration. (BZ#962832)
All users who require xorg-x11-glamor are advised to install these new packages.

Chapter 8. Updated Packages

8.1. abrt

Updated abrt, libreport, and btparser packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
ABRT is a tool to help users to detect defects in applications and to create a problem report with all the information needed by a maintainer to fix it. ABRT uses a plug-in system to extend its functionality.
The libreport libraries provide an API for reporting different problems in applications to different bug targets like Bugzilla, ftp, and trac.
The btparser utility is a backtrace parser and analyzer library, which works with backtraces produced by the GNU Project Debugger. It can parse a text file with a backtrace to a tree of C structures, allowing to analyze the threads and frames of the backtrace and process them.

Bug Fixes

BZ#854668
If the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf file was modified so that the "DumpLocation" and "WatchCrashdumpArchiveDir" variables referred to the same directory, the ABRT utility tried to process the files in that directory as both archives and new problem directories, which led to unpredictable results. With this update, ABRT refuses to start if such misconfiguration is detected.
BZ#896090
While creating a case, the reporter-rhtsupport utility sent the operation system (OS) version value which RHT customer center server did not accept. Consequently, a new case failed to be created and an error message was returned. With this update, suffixes such as "Beta" in the OS version value are not stripped, RHT customer center server accepts the version value, and a case is created.
BZ#952773
Prior to this update, the abrt-watch-log and abrt-dump-oops utilities were creating too many new problem directories when a kernel error occurred periodically. As a consequence, the user was flooded with problem reports and the /var partition could overflow. To fix this bug, abrt-dump-oops has been changed to ignore all additional problems for a few minutes after it sees 5 or more of them. As a result, the user is not flooded with problem reports.

Enhancements

BZ#952704
The Red Hat Support tool required an API for querying crashes caught by ABRT. With this update, python API for ABRT has been provided and it is now possible to use python API to query bugs caught by ABRT.
BZ#961231
There is a high probability that users who do not use the graphical environment (headless systems) will miss the problems detected by the ABRT utility. When the user installs the abrt-console-notification packages, they now see a warning message in the console regarding new problems detected since the last login.
All users of abrt, libreport and btparser are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.2. anaconda

Updated anaconda packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Bug Fixes

BZ#818233
Previously, anaconda did not recognize a DVD ISO image written to a USB drive as a source repository for installation because this device does not have partitions. Consequently, the ISO acted like a boot.iso and it was not possible to install packages included in it. With this update, anaconda has been modified to include devices with ISO 9660 formatting, and to configure any device as a source repository if this device contains the /repodata/repomd.xml file. As a result, anaconda now recognizes ISO on USB as expected.
BZ#845572
Prior to this update, the anaconda loader command created the /etc/sysconfig/network file by renaming a new temporary file, which did not trigger the NetworkManager's inotify mechanism. Consequently, a hostname set by the network --hostname kickstart option could be overridden by NetworkManager with hostname obtained though DHCP or DNS. With this update, loader has been modified to write new values directly into /etc/sysconfig/network. As a result, NetworkManager now accepts the hostname value specified in this file.
BZ#846336
Previously, anaconda did not attempt to use another loop device if the firstly selected one was already in use. Consequently, HDD ISO installation failed if loop devices were used in the kickstart %pre section. With this update, anaconda has been modified to use another loop device if the first one is already in use. As a result, HDD ISO installation works as expected.
BZ#847600
With this update, the list-harddrives command has been modified not to list the /dev/srX devices in its output.
BZ#851284
With this update, several typographical errors have been corrected in the About LVM dialog.
BZ#852523
When a different set of disks was used for the clearpart --drives and part --ondisk commands, a backtrace was returned. Consequently, installation did not finish successfully. With this update, only one set of disks is used with these commands. User must specify multiple disks with a single clearpart command, otherwise only the last clearpart --drives arguments is used.
BZ#859420
Prior to this update, when partitioning was incorrectly specified, the No free space error message was incorrectly shown instead of the appropriate No free slots dialog. With this update, the correct error message is displayed in case of incorrectly specified partitioning.
BZ#859569
Previously, anaconda in rescue mode unmounted the source ISO before searching for the .discinfo file. Consequently, the stage2 parameter was loaded twice, increasing the boot time. With this update, anaconda has been modified to skip the check for .discinfo in rescue mode. As a result, stage2 is only loaded once, as expected.
BZ#873281
Previously, when re-installing the system with already configured LVM raid1 volumes, anaconda terminated unexpectedly. This bug has been fixed, and anaconda no longer crashes in the aforementioned scenario.
BZ#875644
When a kickstart upgrade was performed on IBM System z architectures, anaconda shut down the system instead of rebooting even though the reboot command was present in the kickstart configuration. Consequently, a manual reboot was required. This update adds support for kickstart upgrades on System z, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#877852
Previously, when installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 on a system with multiple disks and one or more of these disks contained the PPC PReP Boot partition, anaconda created an empty PPC PReP Boot partition on the selected installation disk, but stored necessary boot files in the already existing PPC PReP Boot. Consequently, the system failed to boot after the installation. With this update, anaconda has been modified to use the correct PPC PReP Boot for boot files, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#878907
The algorithm for calculating the swap size did not take into account the amount of space used for the installation. Consequently, even on small disks the installer created big swap space often leaving only insufficient amount of space for the rest of the system. This algorithm has been modified to register the amount of space used for the installation. As a result, smaller (10% of used disks' space) swap is created on machines with small disks leaving more space for the rest of the system.
BZ#880577
Previously, anaconda did not create partitions larger than 16TB on XFS filesystems. This bug has been fixed, and the official limit of 100TB is now used as accepted.
BZ#881005
Prior to this update, the autopart command did not function correctly with already defined prepboot partitions. Consequently, when using a kickstart file that contained the part command defining a prepboot partition followed by autopart, anaconda terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, autopart has been modified to work correctly in the aforementioned configuration. As a result, the installation continues as expected.
BZ#882452
Previously, when configuring network devices within the anaconda GUI, devices using the FCoE network technology were automatically set not to be controlled by the NetworkManager. Consequently, NetworkManager disabled these devices, causing previously connected FCoE SAN disks to disappear from the GUI. This bug has been fixed, and editing network device configuration in the GUI no longer disconnects previously set FCoE devices.
BZ#886020
Previously, anaconda did not return a warning message when using a raw partition for the / mount point without creating a new file system. With this update, anaconda has been modified to display a warning message in such scenario.
BZ#888292
Under certain circumstances, when managing partitions with the anaconda GUI, an unexpected loss of window focus occurred. With this update, the parent window setting has been modified, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#893849
With this update, several typographic and translation errors have been corrected in the Japanese locale in anaconda.
BZ#894050
Previously, anaconda created the /etc/zipl.conf configuration file using a set of default kernel parameters regardless of whether a fresh install or upgrade was performed. Consequently, kernel parameters added to /etc/zipl.conf by users were lost when upgrading IBM System z systems with anaconda. This update adds support for boot loader upgrades for systems with System z architecture. As a result, kernel parameters added by users to /etc/zipl.conf are preserved in the aforementioned scenario.
BZ#895098
Prior to this update, when attempting to install conflicting packages with the anaconda GUI, a misleading warning message was displayed. With this update, this message has been modified to inform about the package conflict.
BZ#895982
Physical-extents size less than 32MB on top of an MD physical volume leads anaconda to problems with calculating the capacity of a volume group. To work around this problem, use a physical-extent size of at least 32MB or leave free space (with size equal to doubled size of the physical-extent) when allocating logical volumes.
BZ#901515
Before proceeding to the package installation phase, anaconda did not check if the core package group was available in selected repositories. If this group was not present, the installation terminated unexpectedly. With this update, anaconda has been modified to check for the presence of core. As a result, a warning message is displayed when core is not available, and installation no longer crashes.
BZ#903689
Previously, when configuring a VLAN network device, such as eth0.171, during the installation, the same configuration was incorrectly applied also for its parent device. Consequently, the VLAN parent device, such as eth0, was incorrectly configured during the installation. The bug has been fixed, and the VLAN device configuration is now applied correctly.
BZ#909463
Under certain circumstances, kernel command-line entries created by anaconda and passed to GRUB did not work correctly. Consequently, in multi-path configuration, the Boot File System (BFS) terminated unexpectedly when the last FCoE interface specified in kernel command was not on-line. With this update, the form of kernel command-line entries has been modified, and BFS no longer fails in the aforementioned scenario.
BZ#919409
Previously, the /etc/multipath/bindings file had incorrect SElinux context after installation. This bug has been fixed, and /etc/multipath/bindings is now installed with correct SElinux context.
BZ#921609
Prior to this update, the generated kickstart file did not contain correct network commands for VLAN interfaces. Consequently, these commands were not reusable during the installation. This bug has been fixed, and the generated kickstart now contains reusable network commands.
BZ#928144
By default, the AMD IOMMU driver is disabled in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 for stability reasons. However, when IOMMU is expected to be present for trusted boot, this driver is needed. With this update, anaconda has been modified to enable AMD IOMMU in the kernel boot parameters when the tboot package is installed. MD IOMMU is enabled when trusted boot is in use and AMD IOMMU specifications are present and enabled in the BIOS. To revert these settings, users may remove the "amd_iommu=on" kernel parameter if stability issues are encountered.
BZ#947704
Previously, it was not possible to blacklist the usb-storage module during the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. This bug has been fixed, and usb-storage can now be blacklisted without complications.
BZ#949409
Under certain rare circumstances, the dasd_eckd_mod driver was not loaded during linuxrc.s390 installation and anaconda became unresponsive. With this update, a patch has been applied to prevent this problem.
BZ#971961
Previously, bond network devices were activated only in the early stage of installation. Consequently, bond devices configured by network commands in the stage2 file were not activated. This behavior has been changed and bond devices can now be activated also in later stages of installation.
BZ#994504
Previously, anaconda loaded certain required packages multiple times during installation. Consequently, the dependency solving took a long time, growing with number of disks and file systems. With this update, anaconda has been modified to use a more efficient way of selecting packages, thus reducing the time spent on dependency solving.
BZ#998486
With this update, anaconda no longer requires the fcoe-utils package for installation on the IBM System z architectures.
BZ#1003844
Prior to this update, anaconda limited swap size to 10 % of disk space even if --hibernation option was used in the kickstart file. With this update, anaconda has been modified to accept the --hibernation option, and swap size is no longer limited to 10% of disk space when this option is specified.
BZ#1004752
Due to an incorrect setting in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config.anaconda configuration file, the sshd daemon did not start during installation on IBM System z architectures in FIPS mode. Consequently, the installation was not successful. This bug has been fixed, and sshd now runs as expected during installation in FIPS mode.
BZ#1007641
Prior to this update, multipath devices were not listed during installation in VNC mode. This bug has been fixed, and these devices are now listed properly.
BZ#1007683
Devices directly formatted with a file system without any partitions are not supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Previously, anaconda did not verify if devices meet this condition. Consequently, when attempting to create a new partition on such unsupported device, anaconda terminated unexpectedly. With this update, anaconda has been modified to check if the device is unpartitioned and to abort partitioning in such case, thus preventing the crash.
BZ#1007884
Previously, a bug in the zipl boot loader caused a runtime error in anaconda. Consequently, the IBM System z architectures with rootfs on iSCSI LUN failed to boot after ananaconda upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 to 6.5. This bug has been fixed, and the failed booting no longer occurs after system upgrade.
BZ#1008731
Due to an outdated FCoE detection for Broadcom adapters in anaconda, the system was unable to boot after OS after FCoE BFS installation on HP systems. With this update, anaconda has been modified to correctly detect FCoE on Broadcom adapters, and the boot problems no longer occur in the aforementioned scenario.
BZ#1008941
Under certain circumstances, after an upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 to 6.5, the IBM System z system did not boot from the correct storage device. This bug has been fixed, and System z systems now boot from the correct device after upgrade.
BZ#1009691
Certain adapters, such as 10GBaseT Twin Pond require longer time to link up. This time often exceeded the timeout limit of the fipvlan tool used by the installer. Consequently, adding FCoE targets in the GUI failed by timing out. With this update, the timeout limit of fipvlan has been raised. As a result, FCoE target is now added successfully regardless of adapter type. Nevertheless, to view the added device in the GUI, user has to go two screens back to the language selection and then forth.
BZ#1013176
Previously, the list of FCoE LUNs disappeared from the SAN Devices tab in anaconda after adding a second adapter during installation of the Specialized Storage BFS. This bug has been fixed, and the list is now displayed correctly during the installation.
BZ#1018703
Prior to this update, anaconda incorrectly extracted partition names for NVMe devices. Consequently, the boot loader installation failed on NVMe devices. This bug has been fixed, and NVMe devices are now installed successfully.

Enhancements

BZ#890095
This update adds more flexible support for disk references within the --driveorder option in the kickstart boot loader. It is now possible to specify disks that use the /dev/disk/by-*/ folders as arguments for --driveorder.
BZ#905227
This update adds the --ipv6gateway option to the kickstart network command, which allows to specify a default IPv6 gateway. Now, both IPv4 and IPv6 default gateways can be specified in network kickstart command using --gateway or --ipv6gateway respectively.
BZ#915666
With this update, a partition size check has been added to anaconda to ensure that the boot partition on x86 architectures is always less than 2TB, which is required by the GRUB boot loader.
BZ#917815
With this update, anaconda has been modified to allow the DDNS method in the installer. If a hostname is specified in the kickstart configuration of a network device that uses the DHCP protocol, this hostname is passed to the dhclient utility.
Users of anaconda are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.3. arptables_jf

Updated arptables_jf packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The arptables_jf utility controls the arpfilter packet filtering code in the Linux kernel.

Bug Fixes

BZ#807315
Prior to this update, both the "mangle-hw-s" and "mangle-hw-d" options required the use of the "--arhln" option. However, even if the "--arhln" option was specified on the command line, the "arptables" command did not recognize it. As a consequence, it was not possible to use those two options successfully. These updated packages fix this bug and the "--arhln" option can now be used together with the mangle hardware options.
BZ#963209
When the "-x" command line option (exact values) was used along with the "-L" (List rules) option, the arptables utility did not list rules but issued an error message saying "-x" option is illegal with "-L". With this update, the arptables utility now uses the "-x" option when listing rules.
Users of arptables_jf are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.4. augeas

Updated augeas packages that fix two security issues, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having low security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
Augeas is a utility for editing configuration. Augeas parses configuration files in their native formats and transforms them into a tree. Configuration changes are made by manipulating this tree and saving it back into native configuration files. Augeas also uses "lenses" as basic building blocks for establishing the mapping from files into the Augeas tree and back.

Security Fix

CVE-2012-0786, CVE-2012-0787
Multiple flaws were found in the way Augeas handled configuration files when updating them. An application using Augeas to update configuration files in a directory that is writable to by a different user (for example, an application running as root that is updating files in a directory owned by a non-root service user) could have been tricked into overwriting arbitrary files or leaking information via a symbolic link or mount point attack.

Note

The augeas package has been upgraded to upstream version 1.0.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#817753)

Bug Fixes

BZ#799885
Previously, when single quotes were used in an XML attribute, Augeas was unable to parse the file with the XML lens. An upstream patch has been provided ensuring that single quotes are handled as valid characters and parsing no longer fails.
BZ#855022
Prior to this update, Augeas was unable to set up the "require_ssl_reuse" option in the vsftpd.conf file. The updated patch fixes the vsftpd lens to properly recognize this option, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#799879
Previously, the XML lens did not support non-Unix line endings. Consequently, Augeas was unable to load any files containing such line endings. The XML lens has been fixed to handle files with CRLF line endings, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#826752
Previously, Augeas was unable to parse modprobe.conf files with spaces around "=" characters in option directives. The modprobe lens has been updated and parsing no longer fails.
All Augeas users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements.

8.5. autofs

Updated autofs packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon. The daemon automatically mounts file systems when in use and unmounts them when they are not busy.

Bug Fixes

BZ#859078
Under certain circumstances, the autofs utility did not respect all configured settings and used the UDP protocol to probe availability of network file systems. This can lead to some servers refusing the connection with the message:
Client x.x.x.x is violating the NFSv4 specification by sending a UDP/IP datagram to the NFSv4 server.
With this update, autofs has been modified to respect explicitly defined NFSv4 requests, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#886623
Due to changes made to the autofs utility, when probing server availability at mount time, mounts using the RDMA protocol are no longer recognized. With this update, autofs has been modified not to probe availability for mounts that use the RDMA protocol.
BZ#903944
Previously, the autofs utility ignored the --random-multimount-selection option. Consequently, this setting was not used when mounting local file systems even when it was given. This bug has been fixed and --random-multimount-selection now works as expected.
BZ#908020
Previously, when two nearly simultaneous mount requests appeared, NFS mounts mounted by the autofs utility sometimes terminated. This was caused by using invalid protoent structures to identify the protocol. With this update, autofs has been modified to use numeric protocol IDs, instead of protoent structures. As a result, attempts to mount NFS no longer fail in the described scenario.
BZ#971131
Prior to this update, the autofs master map parser did not recognize the SELinux context= option and returned a syntax error when the option was used. The master map parser has been updated to recognize SELinux context= that can now be used without complications.
BZ#974884
Previously, the autofs utility did not recognize the allowed limit of maximum opened files after it was increased by the system administrator. Consequently, the default limit was used regardless of the new configuration. With this update, autofs has been modified to check for changes of this limit and to apply them correctly.
BZ#996749
Previously, the libldap library was not initialized in a thread-safe manner. Consequently, when running automount, the ber_memalloc_x() function could have terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, the initializaliton of libldap has been modified to be thread-safe and ber_memalloc_x() no longer crashes in the aforementioned scenario. (BZ#996749)
BZ#979929
When the automount daemon was checking host availability and one of the network interfaces was marked "DOWN", automount terminated with a segmentation fault. With this update, a check for this case has been added and the segmentation fault no longer occurs.
BZ#994296
When the automount daemon received a shutdown signal, executing the autofs reload command caused automount to stop running when multiple maps were being removed from the auto.master map. A patch has been added to fix this bug and automount no longer terminates in the described case.
BZ#994297
A change that removed a code for adding the current map entry caused wildcard indirect multi-mount map entries to fail to mount. A patch to fix wildcard multi-map regression has been added and map entries now mount successfully.
BZ#1002896
Due to an execution order race that occurred when creating an expire thread, the automount daemon became unresponsive. The code that handled the expire thread creation has been modified to prevent the aforementioned problem.
BZ#996749
Previously, no locking was performed around LDAP initialization calls. However, these functions are not thread-safe and race conditions could have occurred. With this update, the locking has been added and the risk of race condition is now reduced.

Enhancements

BZ#982103
The description of the TIMEOUT configuration option has been enhanced in the autofs man page. The description now explains the internal default configuration more clearly.
BZ#852327
The autofs utility has been updated to provide the ability to dump its mount maps in a simple <key, value> format in addition to the existing informational format.
Users of autofs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.6. batik

Updated batik packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The batik packages provide the Batik toolkit based on a Java technology. This toolkit is used by applications that require to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for various purposes, such as viewing, generation, or manipulation.

Bug Fixes

BZ#631677
This update removes the empty batik-debuginfo package.
BZ#867701, BZ#995471
Previously, an attempt to use the rasterizer utility to convert an SVG image to the JPEG format caused an error to be returned. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and rasterizer now converts SVG images to the JPEG format correctly.
BZ#883464
Previously, the manifest.mf file included the keyword "version" instead of "bundle-version". Consequently, the Eclipse platform did not work correctly with Batik utilities. This bug has been fixed and Eclipse now works as expected.
BZ#979527, BZ#995471
Due to a bug in the underlying source code, an attempt to use the ttf2svg font converter failed with an exception. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and ttf2svg now works correctly.
BZ#995471
Previously, the batik packages contained many bugs, among others classpath errors and errors connected with a missing module for handling the JPEG format. Consequently, Batik utilities, such as raterizer, svgpp, and ttf2svg, failed with exceptions. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to fix these bugs and the aforementioned utilities now work as expected.
Users of batik are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.7. bfa-firmware

Updated bfa-firmware packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The bfa-firmware package contains the Brocade Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) Firmware to run Brocade Fibre Channel and CNA adapters. This package also supports the Brocade BNA network adapter.

Note

The bfa-firmware packages have been upgraded to upstream version 3.2.21-1, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#928990, BZ#1007100)
All users of bfa-firmware are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.8. bind-dyndb-ldap

Updated bind-dyndb-ldap packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The dynamic LDAP back-end is a plug-in for BIND that provides back-end capabilities to LDAP databases. It features support for dynamic updates and internal caching that helps to reduce the load on LDAP servers.

Bug Fixes

BZ#908780
Previously, the bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in did not handle DNS zones without the "idnsUpdatePolicy" attribute properly, which led to a harmless, but misleading error message:
zone serial ([zone serial]) unchanged. zone may fail to transfer to slaves.
This message was logged after each zone reload or potentially after each change in the affected DNS zone. The bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in has been fixed, so that it no longer prints any error message if the "idnsUpdatePolicy" attribute is not defined in the DNS zone.
BZ#921167
Previously, the bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in processed update policies with the "zonesub" match-type incorrectly, which led to the BIND daemon terminating unexpectedly during the processing of the update-policy parameter. The bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in has been fixed to process update-policy with the "zonesub" match-type correctly, and so it no longer crashes in this scenario.
BZ#923113
The bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in processed settings too early, which led to the BIND daemon terminating unexpectedly with an assertion failure during startup or reload. The bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in has been fixed to process its options later, and so no longer crashes during startup or reload.
BZ#1010396
Prior to this update, the bind-dyndb-ldap plug-in with the default configuration did not establish enough connections to LDAP server for the pointer record (PTR) synchronization feature and, consequently, the PTR record synchronization failed. With this update, the default number of connections has been raised to four, and the PTR record synchronization now works as expected.
Users of bind-dyndb-ldap are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.9. biosdevname

Updated biosdevname packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The biosdevname packages contain a udev helper utility which provides an optional convention for naming network interfaces; it assigns names to network interfaces based on their physical location. The utility is disabled by default, except for on a limited set of Dell PowerEdge, C Series and Precision Workstation systems.

Note

The biosdevname packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.5.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#947841)

Bug Fix

BZ#1000386
Previously, the addslot() function returned the same "dev->index_in_slot" value for two or more interfaces. As a consequence, more than one network interfaces could be named "renameN". This update restores the logic used to obtain a port number that existed in biosdevname version 0.3.11 and, as a result, all interfaces are named as expected.
Users of biosdevname are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.10. boost

Updated boost packages that fix one bug are now available.
The boost packages provide free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries with emphasis on libraries which work well with the C++ Standard Library.

Bug Fix

BZ#820670
The Boost package did not contain the Boost.Math shared libraries, which include an inverse of trigonometric functions over complex numbers and gamma, beta and erf special functions, as specified in the Technical Report on C++ Library Extensions. This update adds the boost-math sub-package, which includes the symbols corresponding to the mentioned functions.
Users of boost are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.11. busybox

Updated busybox packages that fix one security issue and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having low security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link associated with the description below.
BusyBox provides a single binary that includes versions of a large number of system commands, including a shell. This can be very useful for recovering from certain types of system failures, particularly those involving broken shared libraries.

Security Fix

CVE-2013-1813
It was found that the mdev BusyBox utility could create certain directories within /dev with world-writable permissions. A local unprivileged user could use this flaw to manipulate portions of the /dev directory tree.

Bug Fixes

BZ#820097
Previously, due to a too eager string size optimization on the IBM System z architecture, the "wc" BusyBox command failed after processing standard input with the following error:
wc: : No such file or directory
This bug was fixed by disabling the string size optimization and the "wc" command works properly on IBM System z architectures.
BZ#859817
Prior to this update, the "mknod" command was unable to create device nodes with a major or minor number larger than 255. Consequently, the kdump utility failed to handle such a device. The underlying source code has been modified, and it is now possible to use the "mknod" command to create device nodes with a major or minor number larger than 255.
BZ#855832
If a network installation from an NFS server was selected, the "mount" command used the UDP protocol by default. If only TCP mounts were supported by the server, this led to a failure of the mount command. As a result, Anaconda could not continue with the installation. This bug is now fixed and NFS mount operations default to the TCP protocol.
All busybox users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

8.12. ca-certificates

Updated ca-certificates packages that add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The ca-certificates package contains a set of CA certificates chosen by the Mozilla Foundation for use with the Internet Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Note

The ca-certificates package has been upgraded to upstream version 1.94 as released with NSS version 3.15, which provides an updated set of recent Certificate Authorities according to the Mozilla CA Certificate Policy. Also, the update-ca-trust configuration management tool has been added. (BZ#973727, BZ#1002646)

Enhancement

BZ#544376
This update provides Shared System Certificate Authority storage, a system-wide trust storage for configuration data, required as an input for certificate trust decisions. This is a functionally compatible replacement for classic Certificate Authority configuration files and for the libnssckbi NSS trust module. This feature must be explicitly enabled by an administrator. Refer to the update-ca-trust man page in the ca-certificates package for a more detailed description of the feature.
Users of ca-certificates are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which add these enhancements.

8.13. cifs-utils

Updated cifs-utils packages that fix one bug are available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The SMB/CIFS protocol is a standard file sharing protocol widely deployed on Microsoft Windows machines. This package contains tools for mounting shares on Linux using the SMB/CIFS protocol. The tools in this package work in conjunction with support in the kernel to allow one to mount a SMB/CIFS share onto a client and use it as if it were a standard Linux file system.
Users of cifs-utils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.14. cjkuni-fonts

Updated cjkuni-fonts packages that fix one bug are now available.
CJK Unifonts are Unicode TrueType fonts derived from original fonts made available by Arphic Technology under the Arphic Public License and extended by the CJK Unifonts project.

Bug Fix

BZ#651651
Previously, under some configurations, the KDE startup menu did not show any Chinese characters in Chinese locales (both zh-CN and zh-TW), while Japanese and Korean did not have this problem. With this update, the KDE startup menu now displays Chinese characters in Chinese locales.
Users of cjkuni-fonts are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.15. cluster and gfs2-utils

Updated cluster and gfs2-utils packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Cluster Manager is a collection of technologies working together to provide data integrity and the ability to maintain application availability in the event of a failure. Using redundant hardware, shared disk storage, power management, and robust cluster communication and application failover mechanisms, a cluster can meet the needs of the enterprise market.

Bug Fixes

BZ#996233
Prior to this update, if one of the gfs2_tool, gfs2_quota, gfs2_grow, or gfs2_jadd commands was killed unexpectedly, a temporary GFS2 metadata mount point used by those tools could be left mounted. The mount point was also not registered in the /etc/mtab file, and so the "umount -a -t gfs2" command did not unmount it. This mount point could prevent systems from rebooting properly, and cause the kernel to panic in cases where it was manually unmounted after the normal GFS2 mount point. This update corrects the problem by creating an mtab entry for the temporary mount point, which unmounts it before exiting when signals are received.
BZ#893925
Previously, the cman utility did not work correctly if there was a brief network failure in a cluster running in two_node mode with no fence delay. Consequently, the two nodes killed each other when the connection was re-established. This update adds a 5-second delay to the “fenced” daemon for the node with the higher node ID and the described problem no longer occurs. Another option is to add a fence delay into the "cluster.conf" file, as documented in the Red Hat Knowledgebase (see https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/54829).
BZ#982670
Prior to this update, the cman init script did not handle its lock file correctly when executing the "restart" command. Consequently, the node could be removed from the cluster by other members during the node reboot. The cman init script has been modified to handle the lock file correctly, and no fencing action is now taken by other nodes of the cluster.
BZ#889564
Previously, when the corosync utility detected a "process pause", an old, therefore invalid, control group ID was occasionally sent to the gfs_controld daemon. Consequently, gfs_controld became unresponsive. This update fixes gfs_controld to discard messages with old control group IDs, and gfs_controld no longer hangs in this scenario.
BZ#888857
Prior to this update, the "fenced" daemon and other related daemons occasionally closed a file descriptor that was still referenced by the corosync libraries during an attempt to stop the daemons. Consequently, the daemons did not terminate properly and shutting down the cluster utility failed. This bug has been fixed, the file descriptor now stays open and it is marked unused by the daemons, and the daemons terminate properly.
BZ#989647
Previously, the fsck.gfs2 utility did not handle a certain type of file system corruption properly. As a consequence, fsck.gfs2 terminated with an error message and did not repair the corruption. This update extends the abilities of fsck.gfs2 to handle file system corruption and the described problems no longer occur.
BZ#1007970
Previously, the "-K" option was unavailable in the mkfs.gfs2 utility. Consequently, mkfs.gfs2 returned the "invalid option" error message, and it was impossible to use this option to keep and not to discard unused blocks. With this update, mkfs.gfs2 handles the "-K" option properly.
BZ#896191
The cluster.conf(5) manual page contained incorrect information that the default syslog facility was "daemon". This update corrects this statement to "local4".
BZ#902920
Previously, the fsck.gfs2 utility did not correctly recognize cases when information about a directory in the Global File System 2 (GFS2) was misplaced. Also, fsck.gfs2 did not properly check consistency of the GFS2 directory hash table. As a consequence, fsck.gfs2 did not report problems with the file system and the files in the corrupted directories were unusable. With this update, fsck.gfs2 has been modified to do extensive sanity checking and it is now able to identify and fix the described problems among others.
BZ#963657
Prior to this update, nested Global File System 2 (GFS2) mount points were not taken into account when stopping the GFS2 resources. Consequently, the mount points were not being unmounted in the correct order and the gfs2 utility failed to stop. The gfs2 init script has been modified to unmount GFS2 mount points in the correct order and the stopping of gfs2 no longer fails in this scenario.
BZ#920358
Previously, the qdiskd daemon did not correctly handle newly rejoined nodes that had been rebooted uncleanly. Consequently, qdiskd removed such nodes after its initialization. With this update, qdiskd skips counting of the missed updates for nodes in the "S_NONE" state, and it no longer removes nodes in the described scenario.
BZ#888318
Previously, the qdiskd daemon did not issue a specific error message for cases when the token timeout was set incorrectly in the "cluster.conf" file. Consequently, qdiskd terminated with the "qdiskd: configuration failed" error message giving no details. This update adds a specific error message for the described cases.
BZ#886585
Previously, the gfs2_grow utility returned a zero exit status even in cases where no growth was possible, due to how little the device had grown. Consequently, automated scripts, used especially for testing of gfs2_grow, received an incorrect "0" return code. With this update, gfs2_grow has been modified to return a non-zero exit status when its operations fail.
BZ#871603
Previously, the help text for the "ccs_tool create" command contained incorrect parameters for the "addfence" subcommand, namely "user" instead of "login". Consequently, users could create an incorrect "cluster.conf" file. With this update, the help text has been corrected.
BZ#985796
Previously, when the fsck.gfs2 utility was repairing the superblock, it looked up the locking configuration fields from the "cluster.conf" file. Consequently, the "lockproto" and "locktable" fields could be set improperly when the superblock was repaired. With this update, the "lockproto" and "locktable" fields are now set to sensible default values and the user is now instructed to set the fields with the tunegfs2 utility at the end of the fsck.gfs2 run.
BZ#984085
Previously, the fsck.gfs2 utility did not properly handle cases when directory leaf blocks were duplicated. As a consequence, files in the corrupted directories were occasionally not found and fsck.gfs2 became unresponsive. With this update, fsck.gfs2 checks for duplicate blocks in all directories, identifies and fixes corruptions, and it no longer hangs in this scenario.
Users of cluster and gfs2-utils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.16. clustermon

Updated clustermon packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The clustermon packages are used for remote cluster management. The modclusterd service provides an abstraction of cluster status used by conga and by the Simple Network Management (SNMP) and Common Information Model (CIM) modules of clustermon.

Bug Fixes

BZ#951470
Prior to this update, the modclusterd service made an improper CMAN API call when attempting to associate the local machine's address with a particular cluster node entry, but with no success. Consequently, modclusterd returned log messages every five seconds. In addition, when logging for CMAN was enabled, membership messages included, messages arising from the CMAN API misuse were emitted. Now, the CMAN API call is used properly, which corrects the aforementioned consequences.
BZ#908728
Previously, the modclusterd service terminated unexpectedly in IPv4-only environments when stopped due to accessing unitialized memory only used when IPv6 was available. With this update, modclusterd no longer crashes in IPv4-only environments.
BZ#888543
Previously, the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) agent exposing the cluster status and shipped as cluster-snmp caused the SNMP server (snmpd) to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault when this module was loaded, and the containing server was instructed to reload. This was caused by an improper disposal of the resources facilitated by this server, alarms in particular. Now, the module properly cleans up such resources when being unloaded, preventing the crash on reload.
Users of clustermon are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.17. compat-openmpi

Updated compat-openmpi packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The compat-openmpi packages contain shared libraries from earlier versions of Open Message Passing Interface (Open MPI). The libraries from previous releases have been compiled against the current version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and the packages enable earlier programs to keep functioning properly.

Bug Fix

BZ#876315
The compat-openmpi packages previously did not ensure compatibility with earlier versions of the Open MPI shared libraries. Consequently, the users failed to run certain applications using Open MPI on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 and later if those applications were compiled against Open MPI versions used on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and earlier. After this update, the compat-openmpi packages now maintain compatibility with earlier versions of Open MPI on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Users of compat-openmpi are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.18. conman

Updated conman packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
ConMan is a serial console management program designed to support a large number of console devices and simultaneous users. ConMan currently supports local serial devices and remote terminal servers.

Note

The conman packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.2.7, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. With this update, support for the ipmiopts directive in the conman.conf configuration file has been included. (BZ#951698)

Bug Fix

BZ#891938
Previously, the length range of timezone strings was not sufficient to process all known timezone codes. As a consequence, the conmand daemon failed to start if the timezone name consisted of five or more characters. The maximum string length has been set to 32, and conmand now always starts as expected.
Users of conman are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.19. coolkey

Updated coolkey packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Coolkey is a smart card support library for the CoolKey, Common Access Card (CAC), and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) smart cards.

Bug Fixes

BZ#806038
In previous versions, coolkey always created a bogus e-gate smart card reader to avoid problems with Network Security Services (NSS) and the PC/SC Lite framework when no smart card reader was available. However, e-gate smart cards are no longer available for smart card authentication, and the NSS and pcsc-lite packages have been updated to handle a situation with no e-gate reader attached. Therefore, this bogus reader in coolkey became unnecessary and could cause problems to some applications under certain circumstances. This update modifies the respective code so that coolkey no longer creates a bogus e-gate smart card.
BZ#906537
With a previous version of coolkey, some signature operations, such as PKINIT, could fail on PIV endpoint cards that support both CAC and PIV interfaces. The underlying coolkey code has been modified so these PIV endpoint cards now works with coolkey as expected.
BZ#991515
The coolkey library registered only with the NSS DBM database, however, NSS now uses also the SQLite database format, which is preferred. This update modifies coolkey to register properly with both NSS databases.

Enhancement

BZ#951272
Support for tokens containing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) certificates has been added to the coolkey packages so the coolkey library now works with ECC provisioned cards.
Users of coolkey are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.20. coreutils

Updated coreutils packages that fix three security issues, several bugs, and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having low security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
The coreutils package contains the core GNU utilities. It is a combination of the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

Security Fixes

CVE-2013-0221, CVE-2013-0222, CVE-2013-0223
It was discovered that the sort, uniq, and join utilities did not properly restrict the use of the alloca() function. An attacker could use this flaw to crash those utilities by providing long input strings.

Bug Fixes

BZ#747592
Previously, due to incorrect propagation of signals from child processes, the return values of the "su" command were incorrect and core dump information was not shown in the parent process. With this update, signal propagation from child processes has been fixed and the return values of the "su" command corrected. As a result, core dump messages from child processes are no longer ignored and the "su" command returns correct exit values.
BZ#749679
Previously, the su command did not wait for the end of its child processes. As a consequence, the su utility might exit before the child process has finished. This bug has been fixed and now "su" waits for the child process to exit.
BZ#816708
Previously, when invoked with no user name argument, the "id -G" and "id --groups" commands printed the default group ID listed in the password database. Occasionally, this ID was incorrect or not effective, especially when it has been changed. After this update, the aforementioned commands print only effective and real IDs when no user is specified.
BZ#827199
The "tail -f" command uses inotify for tracking changes in files. For remote file systems [-/,] inotify is not available. In the case of unknown file systems, for example panasas, "tail -f" failed instead of falling back to polling. Now, the list of known file systems is updated and "tail -f" is modified to fall back into polling for unknown file systems. As result, "tail -f" now works correctly, even on unknown file systems, with only a warning about the unknown file system and a fall back to polling.
BZ#842040
Previously, the "df" command interpreted control characters in the output mount name. As a consequence, it could be inconvenient to read and problematic for scripts when there are control characters such as "\n" in the output. Problematic characters have been replaced by a question mark sign ("?"), and such output is no longer hard to read.
BZ#867984
Previously, a Red Hat specific patch for multibytes locales support in the core utilities was missing the handling of the "--output-delimiter" option of the "cut" command. As a consequence, the option was ignored if specified. Support for the "--output-delimiter" option has been implemented in coreutils and users can now use this option with multibyte locales.
BZ#889531
Previously, when an "su" session was terminated by a signal, it returned an incorrect exit status. This caused various issues, such as a ksh lockup, to occur. This update fixes the exit status handling and the aforementioned situation no longer occurs.
BZ#911206
Previously, the stat utility used the setpwent() and setgrent() functions. This caused NIS database download problems when the time stat utility was called, thus causing performance issues. After this update, the aforementioned system calls are no longer present in the stat utility source code. As a result, NIS database downloads are not necessary with every stat utility run.
BZ#956143
When parsing a file's content, in which the end of a field was specified using the obsolete key formats (+POS -POS), the sort utility determined the end of the field incorrectly, and therefore produced incorrect output. This update fixes the parsing logic to match the usage of the "-k" option when using these obsolete key formats. The sort utility now returns expected results in this situation.
BZ#960160
Previously, in some cases, the date utility could parse invalid input. This was due to a sign-extending of "other" bytes in the parsing mechanism. This caused unexpected results of some invalid input. The parsing mechanism has been fixed, and, the date utility now correctly recognizes invalid input where appropriate.
BZ#965654
Previously, the "dd" utility produced the transfer statistics output even if the "status=noxfer" was specified. To fix this bug, a new option, "status=none", has been implemented to suppress all informational output. As a result, unnecessary information produced by dd is no longer displayed with this option.
BZ#967623
The "su" utility has a "-p" option, which preserves some of the environmental variables. However, the su(1) manual page incorrectly stated that the whole environment was preserved. After this update, the manual page has been adjusted to list all the preserved environmental variables.
BZ#980061
When moving directories between two file systems, the "mv" utility failed to overwrite an empty directory, which was a violation of the POSIX standard. After this update, mv no longer fails to overwrite an empty destination directory and the POSIX standard rules are obeyed.
BZ#997537
Previously, the "pr" utility used a suboptimal code routine when the "-n" option was specified, and inconsistent padding with either zeros or spaces. As a consequence, pr terminated unexpectedly when the "-n" option was used with a value of 32 or higher. Moreover, the inconsistent padding was hard to parse by scripts. After this update, line numbers are consistently padded by spaces and the program has been improved to handle high values of the "-n" option correctly. As a result, the "pr" utility no longer terminates unexpectedly.
BZ#1006221
Previously, the "tail -f" command did not monitor dead symbolic links properly. As a result, "tail -f" ignored updates to the referent of a symbolic link after the symbolic link was killed. This bug has now been fixed and "tail -f" now notices when the dead symbolic link is revived and resumes tailing the contents of the referent.

Enhancements

BZ#836557
Before this update, a directory cycle induced by a bind mount was treated as a fatal error, for example a probable disk corruption. However, such cycles are relatively common and can be detected efficiently. The "du" command has been modified to display a descriptive warning and also to return the appropriate non-zero exit value. This allows bind mounts of various services to be handles correctly.
BZ#908980
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the "dd" command has a "conv" option, which supports various conversion types. This updates adds support for the "sparse" conversion option, used for sparse files. This feature is useful when copying block devices to files to minimize the actual amount of data occupied. In addition, it can be used for managing virtual machine images in different storage types, including iSCSI and NFS.
Users of coreutils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.21. corosync

Updated corosync packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The corosync packages provide the Corosync Cluster Engine and C Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux cluster software.

Bug Fixes

BZ#854216
When running corosync on a faulty network with the failed_to_recv configuration option set, corosync was very often terminated with a segmentation fault after a cluster node was marked as "failed to receive". This happened because an assert condition was met during a cluster node membership determination. To fix this problem, the underlying code has been modified to ignore the assert if it was triggered by nodes marked as "failed to receive". This is safe because a single node membership is always established in this situation.
BZ#877349
The corosync-notifyd service was not started right after installation because the default configuration of the corosync notifier did not exist. This fix adds the default configuration for this service in the /etc/sysconfig/corosync-notifyd file so that corosync-notifyd can now be started right after installation without any additional configuration.
BZ#880598
Due to a bug in the underlying code, the corosync API could read uninitialized memory, and thus return incorrect values when incrementing or decrementing value of certain objects in the configuration and statistics database. This update modifies the respective code to only read 16 bits of memory instead of 32 bits when returning the [u]int16 type values. The corosync API no longer read uninitialized memory and return correct values.
BZ#881729
Due to a rare race condition in the corosync logging system, corosync could terminate with a segmentation fault after an attempt to dereference a NULL pointer. A pthread mutex lock has been added to a respective formatting variable so that the race condition between log-formatting and log-printing functions is now avoided.
BZ#906432
Previously, corosync did not support IPv6 double colon notation and did not handle correctly closing braces when parsing the corosync.conf file. As a consequence, the totem service failed to start when using IPv6. If the configuration file contained additional closing braces, no error was displayed to inform users why was the configuration file not parsed successfully. This update fixes these parsing bugs so the totem service can now be successfully started, and an error message is displayed if the corosync.conf file contains additional closing braces.
BZ#907894
Due to multiple bugs in the corosync code, either duplicate or no messages were delivered to applications if the corosync service was terminated on multiple cluster nodes. This update applies a series of patches correcting these bugs so that corosync no longer loses or duplicates messages in this scenario.
BZ#915490
The corosync-fplay utility could terminate with a segmentation fault or result in unpredictable behavior if the corosync fdata file became corrupted. With this update, corosync-fplay has been modified to detect loops in code and properly validate fdata files. To avoid another cause of fdata corruption, corosync now also prohibits its child processes from logging. As a result of these changes, corosync no longer crashes or becomes unresponsive in this situation.
BZ#915769
If a service section in the corosync.conf file did not contain a service name, corosync either terminated with a segmentation fault or refused to start an unknown service. With this update, corosync now properly verifies the name key and if no service name is found, returns an error message and exits gracefully.
BZ#916227
The corosync service did not correctly handle a situation when it received an exit request (the SIGINT signal) before the service initialization was complete. As a consequence, corosync became unresponsive and ignored all signals, except for SIGKILL. This update adds a semaphore to ensure that corosync exits gracefully in this situation.
BZ#922671
When running applications that used the Corosync inter-process communication (IPC) library, some messages in the dispatch() function were lost or duplicated. With this update, corosync properly verifies return values of the dispatch_put() function, returns the correct remaining bytes in the IPC ring buffer, and ensures that the IPC client is correctly informed about the real number of messages in the ring buffer. Messages in the dispatch() function are no longer lost or duplicated.
BZ#924261
Sometimes, when an attempt to shut down the corosync service using the "corosync-cfgtool -H" command failed and returned the CS_ERR_TRY_AGAIN error code, subsequent shutdown attempts always failed with the CS_ERR_EXISTS error. The corosync-cfgtool utility has been modified to automatically retry the shutdown command, and the Corosync's Cfg library now allows processing of multiple subsequent shutdown calls. The "corosync-cfgtool -H" command now works as expected even on heavily loaded cluster nodes.
BZ#947936
If the uidgid section of the corosync.conf file contained a non-existing user or group, corosync did not display any error. The underlying code has been modified so that corosync now properly verifies values returned by the getpwnam_r system call, and displays an appropriate error message in this situation.
BZ#959184
If an IPC client exited in a specific time frame of the connection handshake, the corosync main process received the SIGPIPE signal and terminated. With this update, the SIGPIPE signal is now correctly handled by the sendto() function and the corosync main process no longer terminates in this situation.
BZ#959189
The corosync process could become unresponsive upon exit, by sending the SIGINT signal or using the corosync-cfgtool utility, if it had open a large number of confdb IPC connections. This update modifies the corosync code to ensure that all IPC connection to the configuration and statistics database are closed upon corosync exit so that corosync exits as expected.

Enhancements

BZ#949491
The corosync daemon now detects when the corosync main process was not scheduled for a long time and sends a relevant message to the system log.
BZ#956739
In order to improve process of problem detection, output of the corosync-blackbox command now contains time stamps of events. This feature is backward-compatible so that output (fdata) from old versions of corosync is processed correctly.
Users of corosync are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.22. cpupowerutils

Updated cpupowerutils packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The cpupowerutils packages provide a suite of tools to manage power states on appropriately enabled central processing units (CPU).

Bug Fixes

BZ#886225
Previously, some of the commands in the cpupowerutils packages were missing manual pages. Manual pages for the turbostat, x86_energy_perf_policy, cpufreq-bench, and cpufreq-bench_plot.sh commands have been added, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#886226
If a non-root user tried to run the cpufreq-bench utility, it terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault, and an ABRT notification appeared on the desktop. With this update, a warning message is displayed to the user instead, informing them that it is necessary to run the utility as root.
BZ#886227
Prior to this update, the x86_energy_perf_policy utility failed when it tried to open the /dev/cpu/*/msr/ directory. Consequently, a "permission denied" error message was returned. With this update, a new error message explains that the command needs root privileges and x86_energy_perf_policy cleanly exits.
BZ#886228
Previously, the interactive help for the x86_energy_perf_policy utility was short and confusing. The help text has been expanded to clarify the meaning of the command-line options.
BZ#914623
Due to the missing implementation for the "cpupower set -m" command, the error message is returned upon launching the command. Previously, this message wrongly implied that the sched-mc utility is not supported on the system. This update clarifies the message to clearly state that sched-mc is not yet implemented.
BZ#914787
Previously, running the "cpupower -v" or "cpupower --version" commands returned incorrect version information. This bug has been fixed and a selected component of cpupower now reports the correct version-release number.

Enhancement

BZ#852831
Intel turbostat v3.0 utility has been included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The utility is used to read current CPU core frequency and active C-states.
Users of cpupowerutils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.23. crash

Updated crash packages that add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The crash packages provide a self-contained tool that can be used to investigate live systems and kernel core dumps created from the netdump, diskdump, kdump, and Xen/KVM "virsh dump" facilities from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Enhancements

BZ#902141
Currently, dump files created by the makedumpfile utility using the snappy compression format are now readable by the crash utility. The snappy format is suitable for the crash dump mechanism that requires stable performance in any situation with enterprise application use.
BZ#902144
With this update, dump files created by the makedumpfile utility using the LZO compression format are now readable by the crash utility. The LZO compression format is fast and stable for randomized data.
BZ#1006622
This update adds support for compressed dump files created by the makedumpfile utility that were generated on systems with physical memory requiring more than 44 bits.
BZ#1017930
This update fixes faulty panic-task backtraces generated by the bt command in KVM guest dump files. The bt command now shows a trace when the guest operating system is panicking.
BZ#1019483
This update fixes the CPU number display on systems with 255 or more CPUs during the initialization, by the set command, the ps command, and by all commands that display the per-task header consisting of the task address, PID, CPU and command name. Without the patch, for CPU 255, the sys command displays "NO_PROC_ID", and the other commands show a "-" for the CPU number; for CPU numbers greater than 255, garbage values would be displayed in the CPU number field.
Users of crash are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which add these enhancements.

8.24. crash-gcore-command

Updated crash-gcore-command packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The crash-gcore-command packages contain an extension module for the crash utility that adds a "gcore" command which can create a core dump file of a user-space task that was running in a kernel dumpfile.

Bug Fix

BZ#890232
Due to a backported madvise/MADV_DONTDUMP change in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel, VDSO (Virtual Dynamically linked Shared Objects) and vsyscall pages were missing in the generated process core dump. With this update, VDSO and vsyscall pages are always contained in the generated process core dump.
Users of crash-gcore-command are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.25. createrepo

An updated createrepo package that fixes two bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The createrepo package contains a utility that generates a common metadata repository from a directory of RPM packages.

Bug Fixes

BZ#877301
Previously, a time-stamp check did not pass if a file did not exist. As a consequence, an empty repository was incorrectly flagged as being up to date and the "createrepo --checkts" command performed no action on an empty repository. With this update, missing file is now considered as a failure, and not a pass. The "createrepo --checkts" command now properly creates a new repository when called on an empty repository.
BZ#892657
The --basedir, --retain-old-md, and --update-md-path options were reported only in the createrepo utility help message but not in the man page. This update amends the man page and the options are now properly documented in both the help message and the man page.
Users of createrepo are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes these bugs.

8.26. cronie

Updated cronie packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Cronie contains the standard UNIX daemon crond that runs specified programs at scheduled times and related tools. It is a fork of the original vixie-cron and has security and configuration enhancements like the ability to use pam and SELinux.

Bug Fixes

BZ#697485
Previously, the crond deamon did not drop data about user privileges before calling the popen() system function. Consequently, warnings about changing privileges were written to the /var/log/crond file when the function was invoked by the non-root user. With this update, crond has been modified to drop user privileges before calling popen(). As a result, warnings are no longer logged in this scenario.
BZ#706979
With this update, file permissions of cron configuration files have been changed to be readable only by the root user.
BZ#733697
Prior to this update, the definition of restart in the cron init file was incorrect. Consequently, a failure was incorrectly reported when restarting the crond daemon. The init file has been fixed and the redundant failure message is no longer displayed after crond restart.
BZ#738232
Cron jobs of users with home directories mounted on a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server or Network File System (NFS) were often refused because jobs were marked as orphaned (typically due to a temporary NSS lookup failure, when NIS and LDAP servers were unreachable). With this update, a database of orphans is created, and cron jobs are performed as expected.
BZ#743473
With this update, obsolete comments have been removed from the /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron configuration file.
BZ#821046, BZ#995089
Due to a bug in cron's support for time zones, planned jobs were executed multiple times. Effects of this bug were visible only during the spring change of time. This bug has been fixed and jobs are now executed correctly during the time change.
BZ#887859
With this update, an incorrect example showing the anacron table setup has been fixed in the anacrontab man page.
BZ#919440
Previously, the crond daemon did not check for existing locks for daemon. Consequently, multiple instances of crond could run simultaneously. The locking mechanism has been updated and running multiple instances of cron at once is no longer possible.
BZ#985888
Prior to this update, the $LANG setting was not read by the crond daemon. Consequently, cron jobs were not run with the system-wide $LANG setting. This bug has been fixed and $LANG is now used by cron jobs as expected.
BZ#985893
Previously, the crond daemon used the putenv system call, which could have caused crond to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, putenv() has been replaced with the setenv() system call, thus preventing the segmentation fault.
BZ#990710
Prior to this update, the PATH variable could be set by cron or in crontable, but could not be changed by a PAM setting. With this update, PATH can be altered by PAM setting. As a result, PATH can now be inherited from the environment if the "-P" option is used.
BZ#1006869
Previously, an incorrect error code was returned when non-root user tried to restart the crond daemon. With this update, a correct code is returned in the described case.

Enhancements

BZ#829910
This update adds the RANDOM_DELAY variable that allows delaying job startups by random amount of minutes with upper limit specified by the variable. The random scaling factor is determined during the crond daemon startup so it remains constant for the whole run time of the daemon.
BZ#922829
With this update, the CRON_CORRECT_MAIL_HEADER environment variable in the /etc/crond/sysconfig configuration file has been updated. With this variable enabled, cron now sends emails with headers in RFC compliant format.
Users of cronie are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.27. cvs

Updated cvs packages that fix one bug and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Concurrent Versions System (CVS) is a version control system that can record the history of your files. CVS only stores the differences between versions, instead of every version of every file you have ever created. CVS also keeps a log of who, when, and why changes occurred.

Bug Fix

BZ#671460
When a CVS client tried to establish a GSSAPI-authenticated connection to a DNS load-balanced cluster node, the authentication failed because each node had a unique host name. With this update, the GSSAPI CVS server has been modified to search for any Kerberos key that matches the "cvs" service and any host name. As a result, the CVS server can now authenticate clients using GSSAPI even if the server's host name does not match the domain name, and thus Kerberos principal host name part, common for all cluster nodes. CVS server administrators are advised to deploy two Kerberos principals to each node: a principal matching the node's host name and a principal matching the cluster's domain name.

Enhancement

BZ#684789
Previously, the CVS server did not pass the client address to the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) system. As a consequence, it was not possible to distinguish clients by the network address with the PAM system and the system was not able to utilize the client address for authentication or authorization purposes. With this update, the client network address is passed to the PAM subsystem as a remote host item (PAM_RHOST). Also, the terminal item (PAM_TTY) is set to a dummy value "cvs" because some PAM modules cannot work with an unset value.
Users of cvs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug and add this enhancement.

8.28. device-mapper-multipath

Updated device-mapper-multipath packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The device-mapper-multipath packages provide tools for managing multipath devices using the device-mapper multipath kernel module.

Bug Fixes

BZ#975676
Device Mapper Multipath (DM-Multipath) did not test pointers for NULL values before dereferencing them in the sysfs functions. Consequently, the multipathd daemon could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault if a multipath device was resized while a path from the multipath device was being removed. With this update, DM-Multipath performs NULL pointer checks in sysfs functions and no longer crashes in the described scenario.
BZ#889429
Prior to this update, the multipathd daemon did not start listening to udev events (uevents) until all the multipath paths that were discovered on system startup had been configured. As a consequence, multipathd was unable to handle paths that were discovered in the meantime. This bug has been fixed and multipathd now handles all paths as expected in the described scenario.
BZ#889441
Due to incorrectly ordered udev rules for multipathd, link priority was not set for multipath paths when creating the multipath device using initramfs udev rules. Consequently, the /dev/disk/by-uuid/<uuid> symbolic links pointed to multipath paths instead of the multipath device. This could lead to boot problems under certain circumstances. With this update, the multipathd udev rules have been ordered correctly so that the aforementioned symbolic links point to the multipath device as expected.
BZ#902585, BZ#994277
Previously, DM-Multipath did not allocate enough space for the sysfs "state" attribute. Consequently, when a path was switched to the "transport-offline" state, a buffer overflow was triggered, resulting in an error message being logged into the system log. Also, DM-Multipath did not handle correctly paths in the "quiesce" state, which resulted in unnecessary failure of these paths. With this update, DM-Multipath allocates enough space to store all valid values of the sysfs "state" attribute. Paths in the "quiesce" state are now moved to the "pending" state, which prevents the paths from failing.
BZ#928831
Previously, DM-Multipath did not verify whether the kernel supported the "retain_attached_hw_handler" mpath target feature before setting it. Consequently, the multipath devices which had set "retain_attached_hw_handler" did not work on machines with an older kernel without this feature support. With this update, DM-Multipath checks that the kernel supports the "retain_attached_hw_handler" feature before setting it. The multipath devices now work as expected on systems with older kernels utilizing newer versions of DM-Multipath.
BZ#995251
In certain setups, the Redundant Disk Array Controller (RDAC) did not mark a path as down if the target controller reported an asymmetric access state of the target port to be "unavailable". As a consequence, the multipathd daemon repeatedly attempted to send I/O to an unusable path. This bug has been fixed, and multipathd no longer sends I/O to unusable paths in this case.
BZ#1011341
Previously, the kpartx utility did not take into account the actual sector size of the device when creating partitions for the MS-DOS partition table, assuming a fixed size of 512 bytes per sector. Therefore, kpartx created partitions that were 1/8 of the proper size if the device with a sector size of 4 KB used the MS-DOS partition table. With this update, kpartx verifies the device's sector size and calculates the proper partition size if the device uses the MS-DOS partition table.
BZ#892292
When displaying multipath topology for the specified multipath device, DM-Multipath unnecessarily obtained WWIDs for all the multipath paths for all the configured multipath devices. Consequently, the "multipath -l" command took an extensively longer time to complete than expected, especially on systems containing a large number of multipath devices. This behavior has been changed and when displaying topology of the specified multipath devices, the multipath command now acquires WWIDs only for paths belonging to these devices.
BZ#974129
DM-Multipath previously set the fast_io_fail_tmo configuration option before setting the dev_loss_tmo option. However, a new value of fast_io_fail_tmo is not allowed to be greater than or equal to the current value of dev_loss_tmo. Therefore, when increasing values of both options and sysfs failed to set fast_io_fail_tmo due to the aforementioned limitation, even dev_loss_tmo could not have been set to a new value. With this update, if a new value of fast_io_fail_tmo would be too high, DM-Multipath sets it to the highest valid value, that is, the current value of dev_loss_tmo minus one. When setting both, the fast_io_fail_tmo and dev_loss_tmo options, dev_loss_tmo is now increased first.
BZ#889987
When the detect_prio option was set, DM-Multipath did not verify whether a storage device supports asymmetric logical unit access (AULA) before setting up the AULA prioritizer on the device. Consequently, if the device did not support AULA, multipathd failed to detect AULA priority of the paths and emitted an error message to the system log. This bug has been fixed so that DM-Multipath now verifies whether a path can be set with AULA priority before setting up the AULA prioritizer on the storage device.
BZ#875199
Due to a NULL pointer dereference bug, multipathd could terminate with a segmentation fault when removing a failed path to a multipath device. This update adds a NULL pointer test to the code, preventing multipathd from a fail in this scenario.
BZ#904836
When creating partitions for the GUID Partition Table (GPT), the kpartx utility did not account for the actual sector size of the devices with the sector size other than 512 bytes. As a result, kpartx created partitions that did not match the actual device partitions. With this update, kpartx correctly calculates a size of the created partitions to matches the actual block size of the storage device.
BZ#918825
The kpartx utility did not properly release file descriptors allocated for loopback devices, causing file descriptor leaks. This update corrects the kpartx code, and kpartx no longer leaves file descriptors open after releasing loopback devices.
BZ#958091
When the multipath command failed to load a multipath device map with read/write permissions, the multipath device could have been incorrectly set with read-only access. This happened because the multipath command always retried reloading the map table with read-only permissions even though the failure was not caused by an EROFS error. With this update, multipath correctly reloads a multipath device with read-only permissions only if the first load attempt has failed with an EROFS error.
BZ#986767
Previously, DM-Multipath did not prevent creating a multipath device to a tapdev device, which cannot be a subject to multipath I/O due to an unexpected path format. Consequently, if a multipath device was created on top of a tapdev device, multipathd terminated with a segmentation fault on the tapdev device's removal from the system. With this update, tapdev devices are blacklisted by default and this problem can no longer occur.

Enhancements

BZ#947798
This update adds a new default keyword, "reload_readwrite", to the /etc/multipath.conf file. If set to "yes", multipathd listens to path change events, and if the path has read-write access to the target storage, multipathd reloads it. This allows a multipath device to automatically grant read-write permissions, as soon as all its paths have read-write access to the storage, instead of requiring manual intervention.
BZ#916667
The multipathd daemon now includes major and minor numbers of the target SCSI storage device along with the path's name to messages that are logged upon path's addition and removal. This allows for better association of the path with the particular multipath device.
BZ#920448
In order to keep naming consistency of multipath devices, DM-Multipath now sets the smallest available user-friendly name even when the /etc/multipath/bindings file has been edited manually. If the smallest user-friendly name cannot be determined, DM-Multipath retains previous behavior and sets the multipath device symbolic name to the next available largest name
BZ#924924
A new default parameter, "replace_wwid_whitespace", has been added to the /etc/multipath.conf file. If set to "yes", the scsi_id command in the default configuration section returns WWID with white space characters replaced by underscores for all applying SCSI devices.
Users of device-mapper-multipath are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.29. device-mapper-persistent-data

Updated device-mapper-persistent-data packages that add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The device-mapper-persistent-data packages provide device-mapper thin provisioning (thinp) tools.

Bug Fix

BZ#814790, BZ#960284, BZ#1006059, BZ#1019217
This enhancement update adds important thin provisioning tools (repair, rmap, and metadata_size) as well as caching tools (check, dump, restore, and repair) to the device-mapper-persistent-data packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Users of device-mapper-persistent-data are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which add these enhancements.

8.30. dhcp

Updated dhcp packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a protocol that allows individual devices on an IP network to get their own network configuration information, including an IP address, a subnet mask, and a broadcast address. The dhcp packages provide a relay agent and ISC DHCP service required to enable and administer DHCP on a network.

Bug Fixes

BZ#996518
Previously, the dhcpd daemon or the dhclient utility terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault when starting on an InfiniBand network interface card (NIC) with an alias interface and a shared-network defined. Consequently, dhcpd and dhclient could not be used with an alias interface in a different subnet on InfiniBand NICs. A patch has been applied to address this problem, and neither dhcpd nor dhclient now crash in this scenario.
BZ#902966
Prior to this update, if some of the IPv6 addresses were not in the subnet range declared by subnet6 in the range6 statement, the DHCPv6 server incorrectly offered an address which was not from the client's subnet. The range6 statement parsing code has been fixed to check whether its addresses belong to the subnet, in which the range6 statement was declared. With this update, the DHCPv6 server now fails to start with an error message if the range6 statement is incorrect.
BZ#863936
Previously, the DHCPv4 relay agent (dhcrelay) terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault if dhcrelay received a packet over an interface without any IPv4 address assigned. With this update, dhcrelay checks whether the interface has an address assigned prior to further processing of the received packet, and the relay agent no longer crashes in this scenario.
BZ#952126
Previously, when a DHCPv6 request from a DHCPv6 client came from a random port number, the DHCPv6 server sent the reply back to the source port of the message instead of sending it to UDP port 546, which is standard for IPv6. Consequently, the client got the reply on the incorrect port. The reply handling in the DHCPv6 server code has been fixed, and the server now sends replies to UDP port 546.
BZ#978420
Previously, the dhcpd daemon managed memory allocations incorrectly when manipulating objects via the Object Management API (OMAPI). As a consequence, several memory leaks were identified in dhcpd. With this update, memory allocation management has been fixed, and dhcpd no longer leaks memory in this scenario.
BZ#658855
Prior to this update, when the dhclient utility obtained a lease containing the "next-server" option, dhclient did not expose the option to the dhclient-script environment. Consequently, NetworkManager was not able to use the "next-server" option from the dhclient's lease. This bug has been fixed, dhclient now correctly exposes the "next-server" option and NetworkManager can use the option from the dhclient's lease.
BZ#919221
Previously, the dhcpd server was not able to properly handle parsing of a zone definition which contained two or more key statements. As a consequence, dhcpd returned a misleading error message about an internal inconsistency. The zone statement parsing code has been fixed; the error message reported by dhcpd is now more precise in this scenario, saying that there is a multiple key definition for the zone.
BZ#1001742
Previously, when the dhclient utility was running under IPv6 using multiple interfaces, only the last started instance was configured, while others lost connection after the lease-time had expired. Consequently, the last started instance of dhclient received all the DHCPv6 packets, while the other instances failed to communicate with the server. With this update, dhclient is now bound to a specified interface, and multiple instances of dhclient communicate correctly.
Users of dhcp are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.31. dovecot

Updated dovecot packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Dovecot is an IMAP server for Linux and other UNIX-like systems, primarily written with security in mind. It also contains a small POP3 server. It supports e-mail in either the maildir or mbox format. The SQL drivers and authentication plug-ins are provided as sub-packages.

Bug Fix

BZ#1010279
Because of a bug in dovecot's SSL parameters generator, installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with FIPS mode enabled could become unresponsive when installing the dovecot package. This problem has been fixed and the installation now completes successfully in the described scenario.
Users of dovecot are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.32. dracut

Updated dracut packages that fix one security issue, several bugs, and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
The dracut packages include an event-driven initramfs generator infrastructure based on the udev device manager. The virtual file system, initramfs, is loaded together with the kernel at boot time and initializes the system, so it can read and boot from the root partition.

Security Fix

CVE-2012-4453
It was discovered that dracut created initramfs images as world readable. A local user could possibly use this flaw to obtain sensitive information from these files, such as iSCSI authentication passwords, encrypted root file system crypttab passwords, or other information.
This issue was discovered by Peter Jones of the Red Hat Installer Team.

Bug Fixes

BZ#610462
Previously, the mkinitrd utility had no manual page accessible by users. This update adds the mkinitrd(8) manual page.
BZ#720684
Previously, the dracut utility did not call the "lvchange" command with the "--yes" option. Consequently, specification of the original logical volume name (rd_LVM_LV) was required when booting an LVM snapshot. With this update, dracut calls "lvchange" with the "--yes" option and booting LVM snapshots is now more intuitive.
BZ#857048
Prior to this update, the dracut utility copied symbolic links from the system to initramfs without following every redirection. As a consequence, initramfs could contain stale symbolic links, causing the system to boot incorrectly. This bug has been fixed; dracut now correctly copies symbolic link redirections, initramfs contains the same layout as the real system, and boot problems no longer occur in this scenario.
BZ#886194
The dracut utility did not take into account all parameters of the /etc/crypttab file when setting up crypto devices. Consequently, options and file names in /etc/crypttab had no effect in initramfs. With this update, dracut passes options and file names to the cryptsetup tool when setting up crypto devices, and options and files in /etc/cryppttab are now applied correctly.
BZ#910605
Previously, the dracut utility needed a network configuration on the kernel command line to boot with Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI). Consequently, in cases where no network configuration was needed, it was not possible to boot with iSCSI. Now, dracut starts the iSCSI service regardless of the network configuration parameters on the kernel command line, and the problem described no longer occurs.
BZ#912299
Previously, the dracut utility used the grep tool without unsetting the "GREP_OPTIONS" environment variable. As a consequence, grep did not work correctly because of arbitrary options if the user had set GREP_OPTIONS while calling yum or running dracut. With this update, dracut now unsets GREP_OPTIONS and user settings of this variable no longer affect the correct operation of dracut.
BZ#916144
Prior to this update, the multipath configuration file was always included in the initramfs, even if the root device was not a multipath device. Consequently, the administrator had to update initramfs before rebooting when changing the multipath configuration. The dracut utility has been fixed to include the multipath configuration only if the root device is a multipath device. Additionally, the administrator can split the configuration for the root device which is used in initramfs. Currently, dracut recognizes:
  • /etc/multipath-root.conf
  • /etc/multipath-root/*
  • /etc/xdrdevices-root.conf
These files will be used in initramfs as follows:
  • /etc/multipath.conf
  • /etc/multipath/*
  • /etc/xdrdevices.conf
The administrator can make sure that only the specific multipath configuration for the root device is included in initramfs if he does not want the whole configuration to be copied.
BZ#947729
Previously, when using the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor packaging of the kernel on a live image, the path to the kernel which needed to be verified during the initial boot did not work correctly. Consequently, the checksum test of the kernel in Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) mode failed, and the system did not boot. With this update, the dracut-fips module also looks for the kernel image in different paths and checks those paths with the checksum file in initramfs. As a result, booting an installation in FIPS mode now checks the correct kernel image and if the checksum is correct, the system continues to boot in FIPS mode.
BZ#960729
The dracut utility did not include the xhci-hcd kernel module in the initramfs image. Consequently, the kernel did not recognize USB 3.0 devices in an early boot stage and the root files ystem could not be mounted from a USB 3.0 disk. With this update, dracut now includes the xhci-hcd driver in initramfs, and the system is able to boot from USB 3.0 disks.
BZ#1011508
Previously, if the "biosdevname=1" parameter had not been specified on the kernel command line, the dracut utility disabled biosdevname network interface renaming on all machines. Consequently, on Dell machines, interfaces used in initramfs did not have automatic biosdevname names, even though biosdevname interface renaming was active later in the boot process. With this update, dracut only disables biosdevname if the parameter is set to "0". For non-Dell machines, biosdevname now renames interfaces only if "biosdevname=1" is specified on the kernel command line, and Dell machines have biosdevname named interfaces in initramfs.
BZ#1012316
Previously, the time necessary to activate Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FcoE) on a 10GBaseT Twin Pond adapter was too long. As a consequence, the fipvlan utility called by dracut timed out in the process of waiting for the link to come up, and the boot failed. With this update, fipvlan is called with a parameter to wait 30 seconds for the link to come up, and the problem no longer occurs.
BZ#1018377
Previously, when the dracut utility was running the ldd tool, ldd forwarded its output to the cat utility to use the SELinux permissions of cat to display the output. Consequently, if the ldd forwarded the output to cat, and cat forwarded the output further, and the pipe reader exited early, cat received an "EPIPE" signal and reported it to the standard error output. With this update, dracut redirects standard error of ldd calls to the /dev/null file, and the error message of cat is now hidden in this scenario.

Enhancements

BZ#851666
The dracut utility now supports bonding of network interfaces in initramfs. Bonding parameters can be specified on the kernel command line in the following format:
bond=<bondname>[:<bondslaves>:[:<options>]]
This sets up the <bondname> bonding device on top of <bondslaves>. For more information, run the "modinfo bonding" command.
BZ#1012626
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) now requires the FIPS module to be defined as a cryptosystem. Therefore, this update adds the /etc/system-fips file marker when the dracut-fips rpm package is installed. It provides a stable file location for FIPS product determination to be used by libraries and applications.
All dracut users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements.
Updated dracut packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The dracut packages include an event-driven initramfs generator infrastructure based on the udev device manager. The virtual file system, initramfs, is loaded together with the kernel at boot time and initializes the system, so it can read and boot from the root partition.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1029844
In FIPS mode, the self checking of binaries is only done if the /etc/system-fips file is present. Prior to this update, the dracut utility did not copy the /etc/system-fips file and some checksum files in the initial ram file system (initramfs). As a consequence, the self check of the tools needed to decrypt a partition was not done and the tools terminated unexpectedly. This bug has been fixed, dracut now copies all the needed files in the initramfs, and systems with encrypted disks can now boot successfully in FIPS mode.
BZ#1029846
When booting in FIPS mode on live ISO images, dracut searched for the checksum file of the kernel image in the wrong place. Consequently, the booting process failed. With this update, the path to the checksum file has been corrected, and live ISO images can now boot in FIPS mode as expected.
Users of dracut are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.33. e2fsprogs

Updated e2fsprogs packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The e2fsprogs packages provide a number of utilities for creating, checking, modifying, and correcting any inconsistencies in the ext2 file systems.

Bug Fixes

BZ#922847
Previously, the e2fsck utility was unable to detect inconsistencies related to overlapping interior or leaf nodes in the extent tree. As a consequence, some of ext4 extent tree corruptions were not detected or repaired by e2fsck but they were detected by the kernel at run time. With this update, e2fsck is able to detect and repair the described problems as expected.
BZ#994615
Previously, the e2fsck utility incorrectly detected uninitialized extents past end of file (EOF) as invalid. Consequently, e2fsck identified pre-allocated blocks past EOF as corrupt. This bug has been fixed and e2fsck now identifies uninitialized extents past EOF correctly.
BZ#873201
The resize2fs utility did not properly handle resizing of an ext4 file system to a smaller size. As a consequence, files containing many extents could become corrupted if they were moved during the resize process. With this update, resize2fs maintains a consistent extent tree when moving files containing many extents, and such files no longer become corrupted in the described scenario.
BZ#974975
Previously, the resize2fs utility did not correctly relocate inode and block bitmaps when resizing an ext4 file system to a smaller size. Consequently, some file systems became corrupted when the bitmaps were not moved within the new file system size. A patch has been provided to address this bug and resize2fs now maintains a consistent file system in the described scenario.
BZ#885083
Previously, the e2fsck utility failed to store information about file system errors correctly. Consequently, entries in the journal were sometimes not properly propagated to the file system superblock. This bug has been fixed and e2fsck now handles all file system errors as expected.
BZ#895679
Previously, the e2fsck utility did not clear the error log when processing an ext4 file system. Consequently, e2fsck stored detailed error information in the ext4 file system superblock and returned it periodically upon mounting. With this update, the error log is cleared when e2fsck completes and the redundant error messages are no longer returned.
BZ#927541
Prior to this update, the filefrag utility occasionally reported incorrect extent counts. A patch has been applied to address this problem and extents are now counted correctly.
Users of e2fsprogs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.34. efibootmgr

Updated efibootmgr packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The efibootmgr utility is responsible for the boot loader installation on Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) systems.

Bug Fix

BZ#924892
Previously, when an invalid value was passed to the "efibootmgr -o" command, the command did not recognize the problem and passed the incorrect value to other functions. This could have lead to several complications such as commands becoming unresponsive. With this update, efibootmgr has been modified to test for invalid input. As a result, an error message is displayed in the aforementioned scenario.
Users of efibootmgr are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.35. emacs

Updated emacs packages that fix a bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
GNU Emacs is a powerful, customizable, self-documenting text editor. It provides special code editing features, a scripting language (elisp), and the capability to read email and news.

Bug Fix

BZ#678225
The Lucida Typewriter and Lucida Console fonts were not usable with Emacs 23.1 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Consequently, the following error message was displayed in the Messages buffer: "set-face-attribute: Font not available". With this update, no error message is displayed in this scenario and the selected font can be used to display the buffer contents.
Users of emacs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.36. environment-modules

Updated environment-modules packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The environment-modules packages provide for the dynamic modification of a user's environment using modulefiles. Each modulefile contains the information needed to configure the shell for an application. Once the package is initialized, the environment can be modified on a per-module basis using the module command which interprets modulefiles.

Bug Fixes

BZ#918540
When updating the environment-modules package, changes to the /usr/share/Modules/init/.modulespath config file were being silently replaced by upgrades. The file is now set marked as %config(noreplace) in the spec file, thus it is preserved between updates.
BZ#929007
The environment scripts of csh and tcsh used the "test" command without specifying the PATH variable. That could have possibly resulted in an unexpected behavior as a user binary called "test" could have been run instead. With this update, the "test" binary is called by its full path. Misbehavior caused by calling a random test binary is no longer possible.
BZ#953198
When updating the environment-modules package, changes to environment scripts in /etc/profile.d were not preserved. With this update, those scripts have been marked as configuration scripts, thus they are preserved between updates.
All users of environment-modules are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.37. esc

Updated esc packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The esc packages contain the Smart Card Manager GUI, which allows user to manage security smart cards. The primary function of the tool is to enroll smart cards, so that they can be used for common cryptographic operations, such as secure e-mail and website access.

Bug Fixes

BZ#920826
The ESC utility did not start when the latest 17 series release of the XULRunner runtime environment was installed on the system. This update includes necessary changes to ensure that ESC works as expected with the latest version of XULRunner.
BZ#961582
The ESC utility can be started manually or automatically when a card is inserted. Previously, when ESC started automatically, the ~/.redhat/ directory was created and granted with the read, write and execute permissions. However, some files within this directory had the permissions to read and write only. This inconsistency has been fixed with this update and the permissions are now set properly in the described scenario.
BZ#981156
Due to a bug in the esc.desktop file, an error message has been logged in the /var/log/messages/ directory. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and the error message is no longer returned.
Users of esc are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.38. evolution

Updated evolution packages that fix one security issue, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having low security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
Evolution is the integrated collection of email, calendaring, contact management, communications, and personal information management (PIM) tools for the GNOME desktop environment.

Security Fix

CVE-2013-4166
A flaw was found in the way Evolution selected GnuPG public keys when encrypting emails. This could result in emails being encrypted with public keys other than the one belonging to the intended recipient.

Note

The Evolution packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.32.3, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. These changes include implementation of Gnome XDG Config Folders, and support for Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers. EWS support has been added as a part of the evolution-exchange packages. (BZ#883010, BZ#883014, BZ#883015, BZ#883017, BZ#524917, BZ#524921, BZ#883044)
The gtkhtml3 packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.32.2, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#883019)
The libgdata packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.6.4, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#883032)

Bug Fix

BZ#665967
The Exchange Calendar could not fetch the "Free" and "Busy" information for meeting attendees when using Microsoft Exchange 2010 servers, and this information thus could not be displayed. This happened because Microsoft Exchange 2010 servers use more strict rules for "Free" and "Busy" information fetching. With this update, the respective code in the openchange packages has been modified so the "Free" and "Busy" information fetching now complies with the fetching rules on Microsoft Exchange 2010 servers. The "Free" and "Busy" information can now be displayed as expected in the Exchange Calendar.
All Evolution users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements. All running instances of Evolution must be restarted for this update to take effect.

8.39. fcoe-target-utils

Updated fcoe-target-utils packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The fcoe-target-utils packages contain a command-line interface for configuring FCoE LUNs (Fibre Channel over Ethernet Logical Unit Numbers) and backstores.

Bug Fixes

BZ#854708
Due to an error leaving a device marked as in-use, attempts to map a block backstore that had been previously mapped would fail. With this update, mappings of block backstores are properly released, and remapping a block device now succeeds.
BZ#880542
Prior to this update, the kernel terminated unexpectedly when the fcoe-target daemon stopped. A patch has been provided to fix this bug, and the kernel now no longer crashes.
BZ#882121
Previously, the target reported support for sequence-level error recovery erroneously. Consequently, interrupting the connection between the FCoE target and a bnx2fc initiator could cause the initiator to erroneously perform sequence-level error recovery instead of exchange-level error, leading to a failure of all devices attached to the target. This bug has been fixed, and connections with a bnx2fc initiator may now be interrupted without disrupting other devices.
BZ#912210
Prior to this update, there was an error in the python-rtslib library. Consequently, when creating a pscsi (SCSI pass-through) storage object in the targetcli utility, the python-rtslib returned a traceback. The error in the library has been fixed, and pscsi storage objects are now created without errors.
BZ#999902
Since the fcoe-utils command-line interface is required by the fcoe-target-utils packages and is not supported on the s390x architecture, fcoe-target-utils will not work properly on s390x, and thus has been removed.
Users of fcoe-target-utils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.40. fcoe-utils

Updated fcoe-utils, libhbalinux, libhbaapi, and lldpad packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The fcoe-utils packages provide Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) utilities, such as the fcoeadm command-line utility for configuring FCoE interfaces, and the fcoemon service to configure DCB Ethernet QOS filters.

Note

The libhbalinux packages contain the Host Bus Adapter API (HBAAPI) vendor library which uses standard kernel interfaces to obtain information about Fiber Channel Host Buses (FC HBA) in the system.
The libhbaapi library is the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) API library for Fibre Channel and Storage Area Network (SAN) resources. It contains a unified API that programmers can use to access, query, observe, and modify SAN and Fibre Channel services.
The lldpad packages provide a user-space daemon and a configuration utility for Intel's Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) agent with Enhanced Ethernet support.
The fcoe-utils packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.0.28, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version, including support for the virtual N_Port to virtual N_Port (VN2VN) protocol. Moreover, the fcoeadm utility now supports listing Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF) and Link Error Status Block (LESB) statistics, and also support for the fcoe_sysfs kernel interface has been added. Additionally, documentation updates, a new website, mailing lists, and various minor bug fixes are included in this rebase. (BZ#829793, BZ#829797)
The libhbalinux packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.0.16, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. Also, the documentation has been updated and it now directs the user to the new mailing lists. (BZ#829810)
The libhbaapi packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.2.9, which provides a number of enhancements over the previous version. Also, the documentation has been updated and it now directs the user to the new mailing lists. (BZ#829815)
The lldpad packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.9.46, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version, including 802.1Qbg edge virtual bridging (EVB) module support. Also, FCoE initialization protocol (FIP) application type-length-value (TLV) parsing support, help on usage of the out-of-memory killer, manual page and documentation enhancements have been included. (BZ#829816, BZ#893684)

Bug Fix

BZ#903099
Due to a bug in the kernel, destroying an N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) port while using an ixbge adapter, the fcoe service init script could become unresponsive on shutdown. An init script patch has been applied to destroy the associated virtual ports first, and the fcoe service no longer hangs in the described scenario.

Enhancement

BZ#981062
The readme file has been updated with a note clarifying that the file system automounting feature is enabled in the default installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Users of fcoe-utils, libhbalinux, libhbaapi, and lldpad are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.41. febootstrap

Updated febootstrap packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The febootstrap package is used by libguestfs to build a small appliance.

Note

The febootstrap package has been upgraded to upstream version 3.21, which provides one bug fix over the previous version.

Bug Fix

BZ#902478
Previously, when using febootstrap-supermin-helper with the "-g" option, the command did not set the supplemental groups properly. As a consequence, some groups from the user running libguestfs leaked into the appliance build process. After this update, supplemental groups are set correctly.
Users of febootstrap are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.42. fence-agents

Updated fence-agents packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Red Hat fence-agents are a collection of scripts for handling remote power management for cluster devices. They allow failed or unreachable nodes to be forcibly restarted and removed from the cluster.

Bug Fixes

BZ#872308
Previously, the fence agents documentation did not mention how to use the fence_ipmilan agent for fence device HP iLO 3. This update adds this information to the fence_ipmilan(8) manual page.
BZ#896603
Previously, the fence agent fence_cisco_ucs did not respect the "delay" attribute. This bug has now been fixed and fence_cisco_ucs waits the appropriate amount of time, as expected.
BZ#978325
Previously, the fence agent fence_cisco_ucs did not use a proper timeout during the login process, which could have an impact on a successful login. With this update, this timeout is set properly and can be customized by users through the standard configuration methods.
BZ#978326
Previously, the fence agent fence_cisco_ucs failed with a traceback error when the hostname could not be resolved to an IP address. With this update, fence_cisco_ucs exits with an appropriate error message.
BZ#978328
Previously, the fence agent fence_scsi did not provide the correct metadata for the pacemaker "unfence" operation. With this update, an "unfence" operation can be run only on local node.
BZ#912773, BZ#994186
Previously, the fence agent fence_scsi did not respect the "delay" attribute. This bug has been fixed and fence_scsi now waits the appropriate amount of time. As a result, nodes in a 2-node cluster can no longer fence each other.
BZ#959490
Previously, when using the fence_bladecenter agent with the "--ssh" option, the fence agent required also the "--password" or "--identity-file" options. However, this behavior was not documented. As a consequence, when using fence_bladecenter with the "--ssh" option only, fence_bladecenter failed with an error message which was too generic. This bug has been fixed and a more specific error message is now displayed if fence_bladecenter fails to connect.
BZ#887349
Previously, the fence_scsi(8) manual page did not mention the "unfence" operation which is required for fence_scsi to properly function in a cluster environment. With this update, a comment with information about "unfence" in cluster environment has been added to the fence_scsi(8) manual page.
BZ#902404
Previously, when fencing a Red Hat Enterprise Linux cluster node with the fence_soap_vmware fence agent, the agent terminated unexpectedly with a traceback if it was not possible to resolve a hostname of an IP address. With this update, a proper error message is displayed in the described scenario.
BZ#905478
Due to incorrect detection on newline characters during an SSH connection, the fence_drac5 agent could terminate the connection with a traceback when fencing a Red Hat Enterprise Linux cluster node. Only the first fencing action completed successfully but the status of the node was not checked correctly. Consequently, the fence agent failed to report successful fencing. When the "reboot" operation was called, the node was only powered off. With this update, the newline characters are correctly detected and the fencing works as expected.
BZ#981086
Previously, the description of the fence_ipmilan "lanplus" option in the fence_ipmilan(8) manual page was incomplete. This update improves the description of the "lanplus" option and includes information on its impact on security.
BZ#1014000
Previously, an insecure temporary directory was used by the VMware fence agent, which could be used by a local attacker to overwrite an arbitrary local file by the victim running fence agent. This update removes a dependency on the python-suds library, which is vulnerable to a symbolic link attack (CVE-2013-2217), and the VMware fence agent now uses mkdtemp to create a unique temporary directory.

Enhancements

BZ#870269
Previously, users of the HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) 4 fence device had to use the fence_ipmilan fence agent. This update adds support for the iLO fence device to the fence-agents packages.
BZ#886614
This update adds support for the firmware for APC power switches, version 5. This update also adds changes to the fence agent command line interface.
Users of fence-agents are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.43. fence-virt

Updated fence-virt packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The fence-virt packages provide a fencing agent for virtual machines as well as a host agent, which processes fencing requests.

Bug Fixes

BZ#883588
The respective gzip files for the fence_virt(8) and fence_xvm(8) manual pages were previously created with executable permissions for everybody, which is incorrect. This has been fixed and these files are now properly created with 644 permissions.
BZ#903172
A bug in the fence_virt fencing agent could cause the agent to fail listing the virtual machines that could have been fenced by the fence_virtd daemon using the serial channel within a virtual interface. This happened when the virtual machine had been started or live-migrated after starting the fence_virtd daemon on the cluster node. The bug has been fixed and fence_virt now lists virtual machines as expected in this scenario.
Users of fence-virt are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs. Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

8.44. firstboot

Updated firstboot packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The firstboot utility runs after system installation and guides the user through a series of steps that allows for easier configuration of the machine.

Bug Fix

BZ#876018
The code handling the response to a two-button dialog prompted the user to click one of the buttons. After clicking the close button or pressing the Escape key, the response was ignored, and the post-installation process continued even after disagreeing to the end-user license agreement (EULA) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. With this update, the code has been modified to close the dialog and stay on the underlying screen. As a result, clicking the close button or pressing the Escape key works as expected.
Users of firstboot are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.45. foomatic

Updated foomatic packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Foomatic is a comprehensive, spooler-independent database of printers, printer drivers, and driver descriptions. The package also includes spooler-independent command line interfaces to manipulate queues and to print files and manipulate print jobs. foomatic-rip is a print filter written in C.

Bug Fixes

BZ#661770
The foomatic package could not be rebuilt due to the RPM package spec file having incorrect locations for Perl files. The installation locations have been fixed and the package can now be rebuilt.
BZ#726385
Under certain circumstances, the foomatic-rip CUPS filter could fail, causing print jobs to pass raw data to the printer without being correctly filtered. This was caused by a missing parameter to a logging function. This programming error has been corrected and foomatic-rip now behaves correctly in the described scenario.
Users of foomatic are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.46. fprintd

Updated fprintd packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The fprintd packages contain a D-Bus service to access fingerprint readers.

Bug Fix

BZ#1003940
When the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) configuration includes the pam_fprintd module, PAM uses the glib2 functions where the dlclose() function is executed to unload the glib2 libraries. However, this method is not designed for multi-threaded applications. When a PAM operation was made, Directory Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 terminated unexpectedly during the shutdown phase because it attempted to unload the glib2 destructor, which had been previously unloaded by the fprintd service. This update applies a patch to fix this bug so that fprintd no longer unloads glib2 when pam_fprintd closes. As a result, the glib2 libraries are unloaded when Directory Server is closed and therefore the server shuts down gracefully.
Users of fprintd are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.47. freeipmi

Updated freeipmi packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The FreeIPMI project provides "Remote-Console" (out-of-band) and "System Management Software" (in-band) based on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface specification.

Note

The freeipmi packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.2.1, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. Among others, this rebase adds the ipmiseld daemon and subpackage, and the Serial Over Lan (SOL) command processing. This update also provides more secure permissions for configuration files that recognize remote password configuration. (BZ#951700)

Bug Fixes

BZ#616846, BZ#715605
Prior to this update, the ipmidetectd daemon did not fully validate input command-line parameters. Consequently, ipmidetectd terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault when parsing invalid command-line options. With this update, ipmidetectd validates command-line input properly, and therefore no longer crashes in this case.
BZ#818168
Previously, the bmc-watchdog daemon did not create the PID file and did not write the PID number into the file. As a consequence, tools depending on missing PID values did not work correctly. This bug has been fixed, the PID number is now stored in the created PID file and the described problems no longer occur.
Users of freeipmi are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.48. ftp

Updated ftp packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The ftp packages provide the standard UNIX command-line File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client. FTP is a widely used protocol for transferring files over the Internet, and for archiving files.

Bug Fix

BZ#861113
Prior to this update, when the FTP client was used from a shell with elevated permissions (through the su or the sudo utility), it incorrectly assumed the UID from the original login, instead of the user initiating the client. Consequently, the local home directory was incorrect. With this update, the underlying code has been modified to correctly get the login credentials using the getpwuid(3) utility function call. Now, the local home directory is set according to the user running the client.
All users of ftp are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.49. gcc

Updated gcc packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The gcc packages provide compilers for C, C++, Java, Fortran, Objective C, and Ada 95 GNU, as well as related support libraries.

Bug Fixes

BZ#906234
Due to the small local buffer for read tokens, GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) could trigger stack smashing protector when reading digraphs in a program. The buffer has been enlarged, and thus the digraph tokens can be read without harming the memory.
BZ#921758
Previously, GCC could terminate unexpectedly when compiling C++ code that contained a structure with the "va_list" member field. The initialization of such a structure has been fixed, and GCC no longer crashes on such code.
BZ#959564
Prior to this update, the libgcc utility could terminate unexpectedly when unwinding the stack for a function annotated with "__attribute__((ms_abi))". This bug has been fixed by ignoring unwind data for unknown column numbers and libgcc no longer crashes.
BZ#967003
Previously, GCC could terminate unexpectedly when processing debug statements. This bug has been fixed by removing the value bound to the variable in such debug statements, and GCC no longer crashes in the described scenario.

Enhancement

BZ#908025
GCC now supports strings with curly braces and vertical bar inside inline assembler code. That is, '{', '}', and '|' can now be prefixed with the '%' sign; in that case they are not handled as dialect delimiters, but are passed directly to the assembler instead.
Users of gcc are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.50. gdm

Updated gdm packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The GNOME Display Manager (GDM) provides the graphical login screen, shown shortly after boot up, log out, and when user-switching.

Bug Fixes

BZ#712959
Logging into the system with GNOME installed while having set KDE Display Manager (KDM) as the default display manager could sometimes cause the user-switch applet to abort. Consequently, switching the user was impossible unless the applet was reloaded. The underlying code has been modified to prevent interference of multiple queued loads of user information so the user-switch applet is now more resilient to crash in this scenario.
BZ#759174
GDM previously did not forward X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) indirect queries to the correct port of the appropriate machine. Consequently, the GDM host chooser did not work correctly and XDMCP connection could not be established. With this update, GDM now uses the correct port when redirecting XCDMCP queries and XDMCP connections can be established with the chosen remote host as expected.
BZ#785775, BZ#865832
Previously, GDM displayed login messages for an insufficiently short period of time so that some users were not able to read the messages. This update increases the duration of the time period for which is a message displayed at login time to a minimum of 3 seconds.
BZ#795920
GDM previously did not consult content of the "~/.dmrc" file before reading the cached copy of the drmc file in the "/var/cache/gdm/$USERNAME/" directory. This behavior could lead to incorrect or inconsistent users environment settings, such as the default graphical desktop session or language, in environments using network-mounted home directories. This happened because changes to "~/.dmrc" had no effect on machines to which the users logged in and out before modifying the "~/.dmrc" file. With this update, GDM reads "~/.dmrc" before "/var/cache/gdm/$USERNAME/dmrc" so that updates to the user's environment configuration can take effect.
BZ#818074
When the user switched to the already active session, GDM attempted to clean up temporary internal resources twice. This resulted in spurious error messages being logged in the system log. The underlying code has been fixed so that GDM now cleans up those resources correctly.
BZ#844004
When the PreSession shell script fails, the user is expected to be denied login to the system. GDM previously ignored PreSession failures so that the users were able to proceed with an unauthorized login to the system. This update corrects this behavior so that GDM now fails the login process upon the PreSession script failure.
BZ#861114
GDM adjusted the width of the login window in accordance with the length of the authentication message. If an authentication message was very long, the login window became unreasonably wide, resulting in text being displayed out of the visible screen. With this update, long authentication messages are automatically wrapped so the login window retains the expected size, and the message is displayed properly.
BZ#874202
When the user logged out of the system or switched runlevel, the gdm-smartcard-worker extension was terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. This update modifies GDM to ensure that gdm-smartcard-worker is brought down gracefully.
BZ#874707
The GDM default greeter did not set the LANG environment variable in canonical form. Consequently, in mixed environment deployments, such as networks containing Mac OS X machines, the LANG encoding was not correctly recognized by non-Linux systems. This update ensures that GDM sets environment variables are in canonical form.
BZ#953552
The gdm-smartcard-worker extension terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault upon startup if the system was started without smart card support. The respective code in gdm-smartcard-worker has been modified so this GDM extension no longer crashes in this scenario.
BZ#977560
When using the smart card authentication method with the "disable_user_list=True" option set, entering an incorrect PIN disabled all further smart card logins until the user successfully logged in using a different authentication method. This update properly resets the dialog window in this situation and allows users to repeat smart card authentication attempts.
BZ#1006947
When booting to runlevel 5 on IBM S/390 systems, GDM emitted a warning messages about not being able to start the X server, which were harmless but could confuse the user. The underlying GDM code has been modified to no longer attempt to start the X server on IBM S/390 systems, and the messages are no longer logged to the system logs.
Users of gdm are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs. GDM must be restarted for this update to take effect. Rebooting achieves this, but changing the runlevel from 5 to 3 and back to 5 also restarts GDM.

8.51. gegl

Updated gegl packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) is a graph-based image processing framework.

Bug Fix

BZ#620378
Documentation files were installed executable. As a consequence, testing tools failed due to that configuration. To fix this bug, executable bits were removed from documentation files and testing tools now work as expected in the described scenario.
Users of gegl are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.52. ghostscript

Updated ghostscript packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Ghostscript suite contains utilities for rendering PostScript and PDF documents. Ghostscript translates PostScript code to common, bitmap formats so that the code can be displayed or printed.

Bug Fixes

BZ#893775
Due to a bug in a function that copies CID-keyed Type 2 fonts, document conversion attempts sometimes caused the ps2pdf utility to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. A patch has been provided to address this bug so that the function now copies fonts properly and ps2pdf no longer crashes when converting documents.
BZ#916162
Due to lack of support for the TPGDON option for JBIG2 encoded regions, some PDF files were not displayed correctly. A patch has been provided to add this support so that PDF files using the TPGDON option are now displayed correctly.
BZ#1006165
Previously, some PDF files with incomplete ASCII base-85 encoded images caused the ghostscript utility to terminate with the following error:
/syntaxerror in ID
The problem occurred when the image ended with "~" (tilde) instead of "~>" (tilde, right angle bracket) as defined in the PDF specification. Although this is an improper encoding, an upstream patch has been applied, and ghostscript now handles these PDF files without errors.
Users of ghostscript are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.53. glib2

Updated glib2 packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
GLib is a low-level core library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME. It provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads, dynamic loading, and an object system.

Note

The glib2 packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.26.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#883021)
Users of glib2 are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.54. glibc

Updated glibc packages that fix three security issues, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The glibc packages provide the standard C libraries (libc), POSIX thread libraries (libpthread), standard math libraries (libm), and the Name Server Caching Daemon (nscd) used by multiple programs on the system. Without these libraries, the Linux system cannot function correctly.

Security Fixes

CVE-2013-4332
Multiple integer overflow flaws, leading to heap-based buffer overflows, were found in glibc's memory allocator functions (pvalloc, valloc, and memalign). If an application used such a function, it could cause the application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application.
CVE-2013-0242
A flaw was found in the regular expression matching routines that process multibyte character input. If an application utilized the glibc regular expression matching mechanism, an attacker could provide specially-crafted input that, when processed, would cause the application to crash.
CVE-2013-1914
It was found that getaddrinfo() did not limit the amount of stack memory used during name resolution. An attacker able to make an application resolve an attacker-controlled hostname or IP address could possibly cause the application to exhaust all stack memory and crash.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1022022
Due to a defect in the initial release of the getaddrinfo() system call in Red Hat enterprise Linux 6.0, AF_INET and AF_INET6 queries resolved from the /etc/hosts file returned queried names as canonical names. This incorrect behavior is, however, still considered to be the expected behavior. As a result of a recent change in getaddrinfo(), AF_INET6 queries started resolving the canonical names correctly. However, this behavior was unexpected by applications that relied on queries resolved from the /etc/hosts file, and these applications could thus fail to operate properly. This update applies a fix ensuring that AF_INET6 queries resolved from /etc/hosts always return the queried name as canonical. Note that DNS lookups are resolved properly and always return the correct canonical names. A proper fix to AF_INET6 queries resolution from /etc/hosts may be applied in future releases; for now, due to a lack of standard, Red Hat suggests the first entry in the /etc/hosts file, that applies for the IP address being resolved, to be considered the canonical entry.
BZ#552960
The pthread_cond_wait() and pthread_cond_timedwait() functions for AMD64, Intel 64, and Intel P6 architectures contained several synchronizations bugs. Consequently, when a multi-threaded program used a priority-inherited mutex to synchronize access to a condition variable, some threads could enter a deadlock situation when they were woken up by the pthread_cond_signal() function or canceled. This update fixes these synchronization bugs and a thread deadlock can no longer occur in the described scenario.
BZ#834386
The C library security framework was unable to handle dynamically loaded character conversion routines when loaded at specific virtual addresses. This resulted in an unexpected termination with a segmentation fault when trying to use the dynamically loaded character conversion routine. This update enhances the C library security framework to handle dynamically loaded character conversion routines at any virtual memory address, and crashes no longer occur in the described scenario.
BZ#848748
Due to a defect in the standard C library, the library could allocate unbounded amounts of memory and eventually terminate unexpectedly when processing a corrupted NIS request. With this update, the standard C library has been fixed to limit the size of NIS records to the maximum of 16 MB, and the library no longer crashes in this situation. However, it is possible that some configurations with very large NIS maps may no longer work if those maps exceed the maximum of 16 MB.
BZ#851470
Previously, the ttyname() and ttyname_r() library calls returned an error if the proc (/proc/) file system was not mounted. As a result, certain applications could not properly run in a chroot environment. With this update, if the ttyname() and ttyname_r() calls cannot read the /proc/self/fd/ directory, they attempt to obtain the name of the respective terminal from the devices known to the system (the /dev and /dev/pts directories) rather than immediately return an error. Applications running in a chroot environment now work as expected.
BZ#862094
A defect in the standard C library resulted in an attempt to free memory that was not allocated with the malloc() function. Consequently, the dynamic loader could terminate unexpectedly when loading shared libraries that require the dynamic loader to search non-default directories. The dynamic loader has been modified to avoid calling the free() routine for memory that was not allocated using malloc() and no longer crashes in this situation.
BZ#863384
Due to a defect in the getaddrinfo() resolver system call, getaddrinfo() could, under certain conditions, return results that were not Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) when FQDN results were requested. Applications using getaddrinfo() that expected FQDN results could fail to operate correctly. The resolver has been fixed to return FQDN results as expected when requesting an FQDN result and the AI_CANONNAME flag is set.
BZ#868808
The backtrace() function did not print call frames correctly on the AMD64 and Intel 64 architecture if the call stack contained a recursive function call. This update fixes this behavior so backtrace() now prints call frames as expected.
BZ#903754
Debug information previously contained the name "fedora" which could lead to confusion and the respective package could be mistaken for a Fedora-specific package. To avoid this confusion, the package build framework has been changed to ensure that the debug information no longer contains the name "fedora."
BZ#919562
A program that opened and used dynamic libraries which used thread-local storage variables may have terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault when it was being audited by a module that also used thread-local storage. This update modifies the dynamic linker to detect such a condition, and crashes no longer occur in the described scenario.
BZ#928318
When the /etc/resolv.conf file was missing on the system or did not contain any nameserver entries, getaddrinfo() failed instead of sending a DNS query to the local DNS server. This bug has been fixed and getaddrinfo() now queries the local DNS server in this situation.
BZ#929388
A previous fix to prevent logic errors in various mathematical functions, including exp(), exp2(), expf(), exp2f(), pow(), sin(), tan(), and rint(), created CPU performance regressions for certain inputs. The performance regressions have been analyzed and the core routines have been optimized to raise CPU performance to expected levels.
BZ#952422
Previously, multi-threaded applications using the QReadWriteLocks locking mechanism could experience performance issues under heavy load. This happened due to the ineffectively designed sysconf() function that was repeatedly called from the Qt library. This update improves the glibc implementation of sysconf() by caching the value of the _SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN variable so the system no longer spends extensive amounts of time by parsing the /stat/proc file. Performance of the aforementioned applications, as well as applications repetitively requesting the value of _SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN, should significantly improve.
BZ#966775
Improvements to the accuracy of the floating point functions in the math library, which were introduced by the RHBA-2013:0279 advisory, led to a performance decrease for those functions. With this update, the performance loss regressions have been analyzed and a fix has been applied that retains the current accuracy but reduces the performance penalty to acceptable levels.
BZ#966778
If user groups were maintained on an NIS server and queried over the NIS compat interface, queries for user groups containing a large number of users could return an incomplete list of users. This update fixes multiple bugs in the compat interface so that group queries in the described scenario now return correct results.
BZ#970090
Due to a defect in the name service cache daemon (nscd), cached DNS queries returned, under certain conditions, only IPv4 addresses even though the AF_UNSPEC address family was specified and both IPv4 and IPv6 results existed. The defect has been corrected and nscd now correctly returns both IPv4 and IPv6 results in this situation.
BZ#988931
Due to a defect in the dynamic loader, the loader attempted to write to a read-only page in memory while loading a prelinked dynamic application. This resulted in all prelinked applications being terminated unexpectedly during startup. The defect in the dynamic loader has been corrected and prelinked applications no longer crash in this situation.

Enhancements

BZ#629823
Previous versions of nscd did not cache netgroup queries. The lack of netgroup caching could result in less than optimal performance for users that relied on heavily on netgroup maps in their system configurations. With this update, support for netgroup query caching has been added to nscd. Systems that rely heavily on netgroup maps and use nscd for caching will now have their netgroup queries cached which should improve performance in most configurations.
BZ#663641
Previously, if users wanted to adjust the size of stacks created for new threads, they had to modify the program code. With this update, glibc adds a new GLIBC_PTHREAD_STACKSIZE environment variable allowing users to set the desired default thread stack size in bytes. The variable affects the threads created with the pthread_create() function and default attributes. The default thread stack size may be slightly larger than the requested size due to memory alignment and certain other factors.
BZ#886968
The dynamic loader now coordinates with GDB to provide an interface that is used to improve the performance of debugging applications with very large lists of loaded libraries.
BZ#905575
The glibc packages now provide four Static Defined Tracing (SDT) probes in the libm libraries for the pow() and exp() functions. The SDT probes can be used to detect whether the input to the functions causes the routines to execute the multi-precision slow paths. This information can be used to detect performance problems in applications calling the pow() and exp() functions.
BZ#916986
Support for the MAP_HUGETLB and MAP_STACK flags have been added for use with the mmap() function. Their support is dependant on kernel support and applications calling mmap() should always examine the result of the function to determine the result of the call.
BZ#929302
Performance of the sched_getcpu() function has been improved by calling the Virtual Dynamic Shared Object (VDSO) implementation of the getcpu() system call on the PowerPC architecture.
BZ#970776
The error string for the ESTALE error code has been updated to print "Stale file handle" instead of "Stale NFS file handle", which should prevent confusion over the meaning of the error. The error string has been translated to all supported languages.
All glibc users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements.

8.55. glusterfs

Updated glusterfs packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Red Hat Storage is software only, scale-out storage that provides flexible and affordable unstructured data storage for the enterprise. GlusterFS, a key building block of Red Hat Storage, is based on a stackable user-space design and can deliver exceptional performance for diverse workloads. GlusterFS aggregates various storage servers over network interconnects into one large, parallel network file system.

Bug Fixes

BZ#998778
Previously, the "errno" value was not set correctly during an API failure. Consequently, applications using API could behave unpredictably. With this update, the value is set properly during API failures and the applications work as expected.
BZ#998832
Previously, the glusterfs-api library handled all signals that were sent to applications using glusterfs-api. As a consequence, glusterfs-api interpreted incorrectly all the the signals that were not used by this library. With this update, glusterfs-api no longer handles the signals that it does not use so that such signals are now interpreted properly.
BZ#1017014
Previously, the glfs_fini() function did not return NULL, even if the libgfapi library successfully cleaned up all resources. Consequently, an attempt to use the "qemu-img create" command, which used libgfapi, failed. The underlying source code has been modified so that the function returns NULL when the libgfapi cleanup is successful, and the command now works as expected.

Enhancement

BZ#916645
Native Support for GlusterFS in QEMU has been included to glusterfs packages. This support allows native access to GlusterFS volumes using the libgfapi library instead of through a locally mounted FUSE file system. This native approach offers considerable performance improvements.
Users of glusterfs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.56. gnome-screensaver

Updated gnome-screensaver packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The gnome-screensaver packages contain the GNOME project's official screen saver program. The screen saver is designed for improved integration with the GNOME desktop, including themeability, language support, and Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) compliance. It also provides screen-locking and fast user-switching from a locked screen.

Bug Fixes

BZ#905935
Previously, when using the virt-manager, virt-viewer, and spice-xpi applications, users were unable to enter the gnome-screensaver password after the screen saver had started. This occurred only when the virtual machine system used the Compiz composting window manager. After users had released the mouse cursor, then pressed a key to enter the password, the dialog window did not accept any input. This happened due to incorrect assignment of window focus to applications that did not drop their keyboard grab. With this update, window focus is now properly assigned to the correct place, and attempts to enter the gnome-screensaver password no longer fail in the described scenario.
BZ#947671
Prior to this update, the gnome-screensaver utility worked incorrectly when using an X server that does not support the fade-out function. Consequently, gnome-screensaver terminated unexpectedly when trying to fade out the monitor. This bug has been fixed and gnome-screensaver now detects a potential fade-out failure and recovers instead of crashing.
Users of gnome-screensaver are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.57. gpxe

Updated gpxe packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The gpxe packages provide gPXE, an open source Pre-boot Execution Environment (PXE) implementation and bootloader.

Bug Fix

BZ#972671
A DHCP server can be configured to use the Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE) to boot virtual machines using the gPXE utility. Previously, PXE boot failed when the next-server details had come from a different DHCP server. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and PXE boot now works as expected in the described scenario.
Users of gpxe are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.58. grep

Updated grep packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The grep utility searches through textual input for lines which contain a match to a specified pattern and then prints the matching lines. GNU grep utilities include grep, egrep and fgrep.

Bug Fixes

BZ#715295
For some regular expressions, the DFA analysis could insert up to double "positions" than there were leaves. Consequently, there were not enough room to insert all the positions and grep could terminate unexpectedly on certain regular expressions. To fix this problem, space allocation has been increased and grep works as expected in the described scenario.
BZ#797934
When a fixed string pattern was empty while the case-insensitive search was active, grep could terminate unexpectedly. With this update, the check for this case has been added to the code and grep works as expected in the described scenario.
BZ#826997
Previously, the code handling case-insensitive searches could alter a string's byte size while converting it to lower case. Consequently, grep could truncate certain output strings. To fix this bug, the grep code has been modified to correctly handle such cases when the byte size gets altered during the conversion to lower case. As a result, case-insensitive searches work correctly and grep no longer truncates its output.
Users of grep are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.59. grub

Updated grub packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The grub packages provide GRUB (Grand Unified Boot Loader), a boot loader capable of booting a wide variety of operating systems.

Bug Fixes

BZ#851706
If the title of the GRUB menu entry exceeded the line length of 80 characters, the text showing the remaining time to a boot was inconsistent and thus appeared to be incorrect. The overflowing text was displayed on a new line and the whole text was moved one line down with every passing second. This update splits the text into two lines, and only the second line is rewritten as a boot countdown proceeds so that GRUB behaves correctly for long menu entries.
BZ#854652
When building a new version of grub packages, GRUB did not remove the grub.info file upon the "make clean" command. As a consequence, the grub.info file did not contain the latest changes after applying an update. To fix this problem, the GRUB Makefile has been modified so the grub.info file is now explicitly removed and generated with every package build.
BZ#911715
The GRUB code did not comply with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification and did not disable an EFI platform's watchdog timer as is required by the specification. Consequently, the system was rebooted if the watchdog was not disabled within 5-minutes time frame, which is undesirable behavior. A patch has been applied that disables the EFI watchdog immediately after GRUB is initialized so that EFI systems are no longer restarted unexpectedly.
BZ#916016
When booting a system in QEMU KVM with Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF) BIOS, GRUB was not able to recognize virtio block devices, and the booting process exited to the GRUB shell. This happened because GRUB did not correctly tested paths to EFI devices. The GRUB code now verifies EFI device paths against EFI PCI device paths, and recognizes disk devices as expected in this scenario.
BZ#918824
GRUB did not comply with the UEFI specification when handling the ExitBootServices() EFI function. If ExitBootServices() failed while retrieving a memory map, GRUB exited immediately instead of repeating the attempt. With this update, GRUB retries to obtain a memory map 5 times before exiting, and boot process continues on success.
BZ#922705
When building a 64-bit version of GRUB from a source package, it fails to link executable during the configure phase, unless a 32-bit version of the glibc-static package is installed. No error message was displayed upon GRUB failure in this situation. This has been fixed by setting the grub packages to depend directly on the /usr/lib/libc.a file, which can be provided in different environments. If the file is missing when building the grub packages, an appropriate error message is displayed.
BZ#928938
When installed on a multipath device, GRUB was unreadable and the system was unable to boot. This happened due to a bug in a regular expression used to match devices, and because the grub-install command could not resolve symbolic links to obtain device statistics. This update fixes these problems so that GRUB now boots as expected when installed on a multipath device.
BZ#1008305
When booting in UEFI mode, GRUB previously allocated memory for a pointer to a structure instead allocating memory for the structure. This rendered GRUB to be unable to finish and pass control to the kernel on specific hardware configurations. This update fixes this problem so GRUB now allocates memory for a structure as expected and successfully passes control to the kernel.
BZ#1017296
Previously, GRUB could not be installed on Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) devices because it was unable to parse a device name during the installation process. This update adds a regular expression support for matching NVMe devices, and GRUB can now be successfully installed on these devices.

Enhancements

BZ#848628
GRUB now provides a new menu option "macappend". When "macappend" is used either in the grub.conf file or on the GRUB command line, the "BOOTIF=<MAC_address>" parameter is appended to the kernel command line. This allows specifying a network interface for Anaconda to use during a PXE boot.
Users of grub are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.60. grubby

Updated grubby packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The grubby packages provide grubby, a command-line tool for displaying and editing GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) configuration files.

Bug Fixes

BZ#991197
Previously, the grub.conf file was not properly updated after a kernel update with the tboot bootloader. This was due to a bug in the grubby tool which caused it to improperly interpret the grub.conf stanzas that had tboot in them. This update enables grubby to read the HYPERVISOR and HYPERVISOR_ARGS parameters from the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file in order for tboot to perform as intended.
BZ#999908
Prior to this update, yum and anaconda upgrades could have failed with a kernel panic on the AMD64 and Intel 64 architectures due to the RAM disk image not being found. This only happened when tboot was installed, and the kernel "%post" or "%posttrans" scripts were run. This update adds the initramfs disk image to the grub entry, and kernel panic failures no longer occur in the described scenario.
Users of grubby are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.61. gtk2

Updated gtk2 and atk packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The gtk2 packages provide a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces, GIMP Toolkit (GTK+). GTK+ offers a complete set of widgets and is suitable for small projects as well as complete application suites.

Note

The ATK library provides a set of interfaces for adding accessibility support to applications and graphical user interface toolkits. By supporting the ATK interfaces, an application or toolkit can be used with tools such as screen readers, magnifiers, and alternative input devices.
The gtk2 packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.20.1, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#883022)
The atk packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.30.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#883027)

Bug Fixes

BZ#970594
When rendering the text in a combo box, the GTK+ cell renderer always rendered text that was rendered last time as the first item. Consequently, if the previously rendered text did not match any item in the name set, the first item in the "Categories" combo box in the Contacts view could have been rendered as empty, which affected accessibility and automated tests. This update ensures that the cell renderer is now properly updated and renders items for the current combo box call so the aforementioned problem no longer occurs.
BZ#979049
Due to a bug in the GtkTreeView interface, the expand arrows in a tree view in Evolution stopped functioning after clicking on an icon in the system tray. This update increases robustness of the tree expanding and collapsing code, which fixes this bug.
Users of gtk2 and atk are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.62. haproxy

Updated haproxy packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The haproxy packages provide a reliable, high-performance network load balancer for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is particularly suited for web sites crawling under very high loads while needing persistence or Layer7 processing.

Note

The haproxy packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.4.24, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#947987)

Bug Fix

BZ#903303
Previously, the setuid() and setgid() functions did not work properly. As a consequence, the HAProxy load balancer failed to drop supplementary groups correctly after attempting to drop root privileges. The behavior of the functions has been modified, and HAProxy now drops all supplementary groups as expected.

Enhancement

BZ#921064
With this update, support for TPROXY has been added to the haproxy packages. TPROXY simplifies management tasks of clients behind proxy firewalls. Also, transparent proxying makes the presence of the proxy invisible to the user.
Users of haproxy are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.63. hdparm

Updated hdparm packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Hdparm is a useful system utility for setting (E)IDE hard drive parameters. For example, hdparm can be used to tweak hard drive performance and to spin down hard drives for power conservation.

Note

The hdparm packages have been upgraded to upstream version 9.43, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. These enhancements include creating files with the desired size on the ext4 and xfs filesystems, and a possibility to specify the offset for reading operations when measuring timing performance. Other notable enhancements include an ability to obtain and set the "idle3" timeout value of the Western Digital Green (WDG) hard drive, and an ability to obtain and set the Write-Read-Verify feature for hard drives. (BZ#977800)

Bug Fixes

BZ#639623
Previously, the hdparm utility did not assume that some disk information could be unavailable. As a consequence, hdparm could terminate unexpectedly with no useful output. With this update, proper checks for unsuccessful disk queries have been added, and hdparm now terminates with a more detailed error message.
BZ#735887
Prior to this update, the hdparm utility did not assume that some disk information could be unavailable when the user requested information about how much disk space a file occupied. Consequently, hdparm terminated unexpectedly with no useful output in such a scenario. With this update, proper checks for unsuccessful disk queries have been added. As a result, hdparm now terminates with an error message providing detailed information.
BZ#807056
Previously, the hdparm utility retrieved the hard drive identification data in a way that could cause errors. As a consequence, hdparm failed to obtain the data on some occasions and displayed an unhelpful error message. With this update, the respective system call has been replaced with one that is more appropriate and robust. As a result, the hard drive identification data is now successfully obtained and printed in the output.
BZ#862257
When the hdparm utility is unable to obtain the necessary geometry information about a hard drive, it attempts to download firmware. Previously, due to incorrect control statements, hdparm could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault at such a download attempt. With this update, control statements checking for system call failures have been added. As a result, if hdparm cannot operate on a drive, it displays an error message and exits cleanly.
Users of hdparm are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.64. hsqldb

Updated hsqldb packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The hsqldb packages provide a relational database management system written in Java. The Hyper Structured Query Language Database (HSQLDB) contains a JDBC driver to support a subset of ANSI-92 SQL.

Bug Fixes

BZ#996152
Previously, the /etc/sysconfig/hsqldb file was not marked as "config(noreplace)". Consequently, reinstallation or update of the packages could overwrite changes to the configuration made by the user. With this update, the configuration file has been marked correctly, and modifications to the file are preserved during reinstallation or update.
BZ#962676
Prior to this update, the hsqldb database depended on java packages of version 1:1.6.0 or later, which are unavailable on some Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 platforms. As a consequence, installing the hsqldb packages failed with an error message. With this update, java packages of version 0:1.5.0 or later are required, and the installation of hsqldb now proceeds correctly as expected.
Users of hsqldb are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.65. hwdata

An updated hwdata package that fixes one bug and adds various enhancements is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The hwdata package contains tools for accessing and displaying hardware identification and configuration data.

Bug Fix

BZ#989142
Previously, certain information about the Red Hat Virtio Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) device was missing from the pci.ids database. Consequently, when using the lspci utility, the device name was not shown correctly and the numeric device ID was shown instead. With this update, the pci.ids database has been modified to provide correct information as expected.

Enhancements

BZ#982659
The PCI ID numbers have been updated for the Beta and the Final compose lists.
BZ#739838
With this update, the pci.ids database has been updated with information about AMD FirePro graphic cards.
BZ#948121
With this update, the pci.ids database has been updated with information about the Cisco VIC SR-IOV Virtual Function with the usNIC capability.
All users of hwdata are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes this bug and adds these enhancements.

8.66. hypervkvpd

Updated hypervkvpd packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The hypervkvpd packages contain hypervkvpd, the guest Hyper-V Key-Value Pair (KVP) daemon. Using VMbus, hypervkvpd passes basic information to the host. The information includes guest IP address, fully qualified domain name, operating system name, and operating system release number. An IP injection functionality enables the user to change the IP address of a guest from the host via the hypervkvpd daemon.

Bug Fixes

BZ#920032
Previously, the hypervkvpd service registered to two netlink multicast groups, one of which was used by the cgred service. When hypervkvpd received a netlink message, it was interpreted blindly as its own. As a consequence, hypervkvpd terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. After this update, hypervkvpd now registers only to its own netlink multicast group and verifies the type of the incoming netlink message. Using hypervkvpd when the cgred service is running no longer leads to a segmentation fault.
BZ#962565
Prior to this update, the hypervkvpd init script did not check if Hyper-V driver modules were loaded into the kernel. If hypervkvpd was installed, it started automatically on system boot, even if the system was not running as a guest machine on a Hyper-V hypervisor. Verification has been added to the hypervkvpd init script to determine whether Hyper-V driver modules are loaded into the kernel. As a result, if the modules are not loaded into the kernel, hypervkvpd now does not start, but displays a message that proper driver modules are not loaded.
BZ#977861
Previously, hypervkvpd was not built with sufficiently secure compiler options, which could, consequently, make the compiled code vulnerable. The hypervkvpd daemon has been built with full read-only relocation (RELRO) and position-independent executable (PIE) flags. As a result, the compiled code is more secure and better guarded against possible buffer overflows.
BZ#983851
When using the Get-VMNetworkAdapter command to query a virtual machine network adapter, each subnet string has to be separated by a semicolon. Due to a bug in the IPv6 subnet enumeration code, the IPv6 addresses were not listed. A patch has been applied, and the IPv6 subnet enumeration now works as expected.
Users of hypervkvpd are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs. After updating the hypervkvpd packages, rebooting all guest machines is recommended, otherwise the Microsoft Windows server with Hyper-V might not be able to get information from these guest machines.

8.67. ibus-hangul

Updated ibus-hangul packages that fix one bug are now available.
The ibus-hangul package is a Korean language input engine platform for the IBus input method (IM).

Bug Fix

BZ#965554
Previously, the Hangul engine for IBus did not function properly. If a preedit string was available, and the input focus was moved to another window, then the preedit string was committed. After that, when the input focus was moved back to the window, the X Input Method (XIM) could not handle the first key input. This update resolves this issue with a change in the code, and key press inputs after a focus change are no longer lost in the described scenario.
Users of ibus-hangul are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.68. icedtea-web

Updated icedtea-web packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The IcedTea-Web project provides a Java web browser plug-in and an implementation of Java Web Start, which is based on the Netx project. It also contains a configuration tool for managing deployment settings for the plug-in and Web Start implementations.

Note

The icedtea-web packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.4.1, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version including support for updated versions of OpenJDK6 and OpenJDK7. (BZ#916161, BZ#975098)
Users of icedtea-web are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements

8.69. initscripts

Updated initscripts packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The initscripts package contains basic system scripts to boot the system, change runlevels, activate and deactivate most network interfaces, and shut the system down cleanly.

Bug Fixes

BZ#915659
A regular expression, which was used to match the name of the master bond device in the grep utility, was incorrect. Consequently, network scripts did not properly handle lines in interface configuration containing comments and the ifup-eth command failed to activate slave devices. This update provides an updated regular expression for grep and ifup-eth now works as expected in the described scenario.
BZ#919217 BZ#963944
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, a master device was always started after its slaves while using Mode 6 bonding. As a consequence, bonded interfaces were unusable. This update ensures the master device is always set up before its slaves and Mode 6 bonding now works as expected.
BZ#984003
Previously, mounting of the /proc directory in the initrd script did not take into account options set in the /etc/fstab file. As a consequence, /proc was not mounted with the specified options. With this update, /proc is now re-mounted in the rc.sysinit script, which ensures it is mounted with the specified options.
BZ#877928
Previously, initscripts called the nmcli utility to stop the interface even if it was not managed by NetworkManager at the time. As a consequence, the interface was stopped, but the output of nmcli stated the action had failed. After this update, nmcli is no longer called when NetworkManager is not handling the interace, for example when it has failed, is disconnected, unamanaged or unavailable. As a result, the output from nmcli now matches the real result.
BZ#836233
If assigning an IP address through the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 4 (DHCPv4) failed, initscript exited with an error. As a consequence, static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses were not set if DHCPv4 failed. The option IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL has been added to let the user decide whether the script should continue or exit when DHCPv4 fails. Additionally, if set to "no" and DHCPv6 is enabled in the configuration file, initscript tries to get an IPv6 address even if DHCPv4 fails.
BZ#843402
After sending the TERM signal, the killproc() function always waited $delay seconds before it checked the process again. This waiting was unnecessary and with this update killproc() checks multiple times during the waiting delay. As a result, killproc can continue almost immediately after a process ends.
BZ#864802
Previously, initscript did not follow the order of mounts specified by the administrator, because some mount types were prioritized. As a consequence, a subdirectory could be mounted before its parent directory. After this update, NFS, the Common Internet File System (CIFS), the Server Message Block (SBM) and other mount types are the last to be mounted. As a result, the mounts in the /etc/fstab file are processed in the right order.
BZ#814427
Previously, the securetty utility always tried to open the /etc/securetty file in read and write mode. As a consequence, on a read-only root filesystem, this led to failure and the file was not modified even if the TTY had already existed. With this update, securetty now checks whether the /etc/securetty file needs to me modified and exits if it does not. As a result, securetty now works correctly on a read-only root filesystem.
BZ#948824
Prior to this update, users were not informed when an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) check was performed successfully. As a consequence, the users could be confused about the time needed to load the interface. With this update, a message is printed after every ARP check thus preventing confusion.
BZ#921476
Previously, initscripts documentation contained no information about the rule-* files. As a consequence, users did not know how to set routing rules for IPv6 addresses. This update adds documentation for the rule6-* files to the sysconfig.txt file.
BZ#905423
Previously, users were not aware of the /etc/init/*.conf files being overwritten after every update with the default values. A comment has been added to the /etc/init/*.conf files to inform users these files should not be modified and to use the *.override files instead.

Enhancements

BZ#815676
With this update, configuration options for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6) have been applied to the /etc/dhcp/dhclient6-<iface>.conf files. Options for both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 in the /etc/dhcp/dhclient6-<iface>.conf are now applied.
Users of initscripts are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.70. iotop

An updated iotop package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The iotop package provides a program with a UI similar to the "top" utility. The program watches input-output (I/O) usage information output by the Linux kernel and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes on the system.

Bug Fixes

BZ#746240, BZ#908149
Previously, the iotop utility terminated unexpectedly when it was run by a non-root user. This was because a recently-applied patch in CVE-2011-2494 made I/O statistics from the taskstats kernel subsystem accessible only to root users, and iotop did not anticipate that its "taskstats" call could fail when run by a non-root user. This update adds permission checks to iotop, and when the user does not have the necessary permissions, iotop exits with an explanation that root privileges are now required.
BZ#826875
Previously, the iotop utility did not handle platform strings correctly. Consequently, the iotop command could not show the I/O scheduling class and its priority ("PRIO") column on 64-bit PowerPC systems properly. With this update, the bug has been fixed so that the iotop command now shows the "PRIO" column on 64-bit PowerPC systems as expected.
BZ#849559
When an invalid locale was set, the iotop utility failed to start with the following traceback error:
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
With this update, the underlying source code has been modified. As a result, when an invalid locale is set, the default locale is used instead and a warning about this change is returned.
Users of iotop are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes these bugs.

8.71. ipa

Updated ipa packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments. It integrates components of the Red Hat Directory Server, MIT Kerberos, Red Hat Certificate System, NTP, and DNS. It provides web browser and command-line interfaces. Its administration tools allow an administrator to quickly install, set up, and administer a group of domain controllers to meet the authentication and identity management requirements of large-scale Linux and UNIX deployments.

Bug Fixes

BZ#904119
Previously, during migration, users were added to the default user group one by one. As a consequence, adding users to a large group was time consuming. With this update, users are now added in batches of 100, which provides a considerable performance boost over the previous method.
BZ#905626
Previously, the Identity Management client installer did not look for all available servers when it tried to enroll a client. Consequently, the enrollment "ipa-client-install" command failed to enroll a client if any of the Identity Management masters were unavailable during the enrollment. With this update, the client installer tries all servers, either auto-discovered from DNS or passed using the "--server" option on the command line, until it finds an available server, and ipa-client-install now works properly.
BZ#906846
Identity Management did not work correctly when migrating from an OpenLDAP server. As a consequence, attempts to retrieve the LDAP schema from the remote server failed. With this update, Identity Management also looks in the "cn=subschema" entry, and migrations from OpenLDAP servers no longer fail.
BZ#907881
Prior to this update, the Identity Management password lockout Directory Server plug-in processed password lockout incorrectly. Consequently, if Identity Management password policy was configured with the Lockout Time value set to 0, user accounts were permanently disabled even though the maximum number of user password failures had not been exceeded. The plug-in has been fixed to process the password lockout time correctly, and the user accounts lockout now works as expected.
BZ#915745
Previously, update files used when upgrading an Identity Management server to a later version did not contain the new Directory Server schema "ipaExternalMember" attribute type and the "ipaExternalGroup" object class. Consequently, neither command-line interface (CLI) commands using the schema elements nor web user interface (Web UI) as a whole worked correctly. This update adds the missing object class and attribute type to the Identity Management update files. The Directory Server schema is now updated during the Identity Management update process, and both CLI commands and the Web UI work properly.
BZ#916209
The Identity Management configuration parser was not able to parse the Kerberos client configuration file (/etc/krb5.conf) when it contained the "includedir" directive. Consequently, the Identity Management ipa-adtrust-install installer, which directly parses and updates Kerberos client configuration, terminated unexpectedly with a syntax error. With this update, the configuration parser processes "includedir" correctly, and ipa-adtrust-install no longer crashes in the described scenario.
BZ#924004
Previously, when the Identity Management client installer was downloading a Certification Authority (CA) certificate from Identity Management server using the LDAP protocol, it did occasionally not fallback to the HTTP protocol. Consequently, Identity Management client installation failed even though the certificate was accessible using the HTTP protocol. With this update, the Identity Management client installer can properly fallback between different protocols when downloading a CA certificate, and it is now able to complete the installation even when download via one protocol fails.
BZ#924009
The Identity Management client installer did not allow re-enrolling of an already enrolled client. Consequently, when a machine or a virtual machine with a configured Identity Management client was being removed or decommissioned without unenrolling the client first, all succeeding client enrollments failed until the client entry was removed from the Identity Management sever. This update adds a "--force-join" option to the Identity Management client installer, and the privileged administrator is now able to re-enroll an Identity Management client.
BZ#924542
Previously, Identity Management Host Based Access Control (HBAC) rules API allowed administrators to specify a "Source Host" component of HBAC rules even though this component had been deprecated. Consequently, unexpected behavior could occur when using the "Source Host" component in HBAC rules. This bug has been fixed; "Source Host" components are now not allowed in HBAC rules, and unexpected behavior of the rules for administrators no longer occurs.
BZ#948928
Under certain circumstances, the Identity Management upgrade process double encoded the Certification Authority (CA) certificate stored in Directory Server. Consequently, some Identity Management clients failed to decode the CA certificate and installing a client failed. With this update, CA certificates are now properly encoded; client installation CA certificate is correctly retrieved from Identity Management server and the installation proceeds as expected.
BZ#950014
In some cases, the Identity Management installation and upgrade process did not update the user and user role membership information in correct order. As a consequence, user roles were occasionally not correctly applied, and users could fail to proceed with privileged actions even though they had been authorized for them (for example, enrollment of an an Identity Management client). Now, the membership information is applied in correct order, and users' privileged actions no longer fail because of incomplete membership information.
BZ#952241
Previously, when an Identity Management public-key infrastructure (PKI) server certificate (auditSigningCert) was being renewed, incorrect trust argument was assigned to the renewed certificate and the server was unable to use it. The certificate renewal procedure has been updated to assign correct trust arguments to the renewed certificates, and Identity Management PKI certificate renewal now works as expected.
BZ#967870
Identity Management server with Active Directory integration support configured replies differently in NetLogon queries compared to Active Directory. The following discrepancies were present in NetLogon behavior:
  • No response to NetLogon query when querying over TCP based LDAP
  • No response when DnsDomain was not present in the query
  • No return of a LDAP_RES_SEARCH_RESULT to sender when query did not match; NetLogon became unresponsive.
As a consequence, these discrepancies could cause errors in utilities which had sent the NetLogon queries. The NetLogon query responder has been fixed, and the above mentioned issues in NetLogon replies no longer occur.
BZ#970541
Identity Management server did not work efficiently in case of entries with many members, such as a large user group. Consequently, Identity Management CLI or Web UI management commands operating with such entries (for example, adding new users, listing groups, or updating them) could last more than 30 seconds. Several improvements have been implemented in the Identity Management server, namely:
  • Web UI interface now avoids membership information when it is not required (for example, in group listing)
  • Entry membership manipulating commands (for example, adding users to a group) now avoid unnecessary manipulation with membership information
  • Missing substring indices for membership attributes have been added.
With these implementations, the performance of Identity Management CLI and Web UI management commands has been significantly improved, especially when dealing with large user groups.
BZ#975431
Previously, the /var/lib/ipa/pki-ca/publish/ directory, where Identity Management public-key infrastructure (PKI) publishes Certificate Revocation List (CRL) exports, contained incorrect ownership and permissions information after the ipa-server package had been reinstalled or upgraded. Consequently, PKI was not able to update CRL in the directory until the ownership and permissions of the directory were manually amended. The Identity Management installer and upgrade script have been fixed to handle the ownership and permissions of the directory correctly, and CRL exports are now updated properly in the described scenario.
BZ#976716
Prior to this update, the Identity Management XML-RPC interface occasionally did not return the correct "Content-Type" header in its replies. Consequently, programs or scripts processing the XML-RPC response could fail to process the response with a validation error. The XML-RPC responder has been fixed to return the correct "Content-Type" header, and programs and scripts are now able to call the Identity Management XML-RPC interface even with strict validation enabled.
BZ#980409
Previously, the Identity Management Active Directory integration did not expect different procedure for populating KERB_VALIDATION_INFO section of MS-PAC extension for a Kerberos ticket done in Microsoft Windows Server 2012, as compared to Microsoft Windows Server 2008. As a consequence, such Kerberos tickets were not accepted due to an incompatibility and could not be used to authenticate or create a Trust with the Microsoft Windows Server 2012. The KERB_VALIDATION_INFO verification has been refactored to filter out unexpected values before further processing, and the Identity Management Active Directory Trust creation no longer fails with Microsoft Windows Server 2012.
BZ#1011044
Previously, the ipa-client-install installation script did not properly detect whether the client had already been installed on the machine or not. As a consequence, the client uninstall script could refuse to restore the machine when it did not recognize the client as installed. Also, the client installation could succeed even on an installed Identity Management client or server machine. This, however, could disrupt the configuration files or Identity management client or server function. With this update, ipa-client-install has been fixed to detect installation properly, and the issues described above no longer occur.

Enhancements

BZ#955698
This update introduces the "userClass" attribute for Identity Management server host entries. Previously, host entries did not contain a free-form attribute usable for host provisioning systems to tag or set a class for a new host, which could then be used by other functions of Identity Management, for example, by the Automatic Membership Assignment module. Administrators and provisioning systems are now able to use the new "userClass" host entry attribute.
BZ#986211
This update adds the "GECOS" field for user entries to Identity Management Web UI. "GECOS" is an important user field as it equals the user's common name presented to the systems, and it should be editable both through CLI and Web UI interfaces. Now, the user's "GECOS" field can be displayed and changed in Identity Management Web UI.
Users of ipa are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.72. ipmitool

Updated ipmitool packages that fix several bugs are now available.
The ipmitool package contains a command-line utility for interfacing with devices that support the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification. IPMI is an open standard for machine health, inventory, and remote power control.

Bug Fixes

BZ#826027
In a previous ipmitool update, the new options "-R" and "-N" were added to adjust the retransmission rate of outgoing IPMI requests over LAN and lanplus interfaces. Implementation of these options set a wrong default value of the retransmission timeout, and an outgoing request timed out prematurely. In addition, in some corner cases, ipmitool could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault when the timeout occurred. This update fixes the default timeout value, so ipmitool without the "-N" option retransmits outgoing IPMI requests as in previous versions, and crashes no longer occur in the described scenario.
BZ#903251
Previously, enabling the "ipmi" and "link" keys in user access information using the ipmitool utility did not work properly. Consequently, the values of these settings were not taken into account. A patch has been provided that ensures the values of these settings are read and processed as expected.
BZ#923192
In cases of congested network or slow-responding Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), the reply operation timeout triggered the protocol command retry action. Consequently, the ipmitool utility could incorrectly process a LAN session protocol command with the reply from a previous protocol command. This update fixes handling of expected replies for each command alone, and cleans up expected replies between commands. Now, the retried reply of the first command is correctly ignored while the later command, which is currently pending, is properly processed in the described scenario.
Users of ipmitool are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs. After installing this update, the IPMI event daemon (ipmievd) will be restarted automatically.

8.73. iproute

Updated iproute packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The iproute packages contain networking utilities (for example, ip and rtmon), which are designed to use the advanced networking capabilities of the Linux kernel.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1011148
While monitoring IP neighbor cache with the ip monitor neigh command, the cache experienced the layer 2 network miss. Consequently, ip monitor neigh command could not decode the miss event generated by the kernel. To fix this bug, code for neighbor cache events for entry deletion and entry miss have been back-ported from upstream and ip monitor neigh now recognizes cache miss event and format it properly with a miss keyword on the output.
BZ#950400
Previously, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was missing a functionality to set up IPv6 token-only network configuration. As a consequence, the user had fewer networking options. The IPv6 token feature has been implemented in both kernel (BZ#876634) and a userspace interface to iproute. Users can now setup IPv6 token-only networking, optionaly receiving network prefixes later.
BZ#908155
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 shipped with VXLAN (Virtual Extended LAN), a VLAN-like layer 3 encapsulation technique support in the kernel, so a userspace interface was required for users and applications to utilize the VXLAN feature. With this update, the ip utility recognizes and supports the 'vxlan' devices.
BZ#838482
When larger rto_min (the minimum TCP Retransmission TimeOut to use when communicating with a certain destination) was set, the ip route show command did not return correct values. A patch has been provided to fix this bug and ip route show now handles rto_min as expected.
BZ#974694
Prior to this update, the manual page for the lnstat utility was referring wrongly to non-existent directory, the iproute-doc instead of iproute-<package version> directory. The incorrect documentation could confuse the user. To fix this bug, the file-system path has been corrected.
BZ#977845
Previously, there was an inconsistency between the lnstat utility's interval option behavior and its documentation. Consequently, lnstat exited after a number of seconds instead of refreshing the view, making the interval option useless. The interval option behavior has been changed to refresh the data every N seconds, thus fixing the bug.
BZ#985526
Previously, the ip utility was mishandling netlink communication, which could cause hangs under certain circumstances. Consequently, listing network devices with the ip link show command hung in a SELinux restricted mode. With this update, the ip utility checks for the result of the rtnl_send() function before waiting for a reply, avoiding an indefinite hang. As a result, it is now possible to list network devices in a SELinux restricted environment.
BZ#950122
Prior to this update, the tc utility documentation lacked description of the batch option. To fix this bug, the tc manual pages have been updated including the description of the batch option.

Enhancements

BZ#885977
Previously, the bridge module sysfs system did not provide the ability to inspect the non-configuration IP multicast Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping data. Without this functionality, users could not fully analyze their multicast traffic. With this update, users are able to list detected multicast router ports, groups with active subscribers and the associated interfaces.
BZ#929313
Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) tunnels allow for building of Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), which represents a scalable solution for ISO OSI layer 2 networks used in cloud centers. The bridge tool is part of the iproute packages and can be used, for example, to manage forwarding database on WLAN devices on Linux platform.
BZ#851371
If the tc utility is instrumented from a pipe, there is no way how to recognize when a subcommand has been completed. A new OK option has been added to the tc utility. Now, tc in the batch mode accepts commands in standard input (the tc -OK -force -batch command) and returns OK on a new line on standard output for each successfully completed tc subcommand.
Users of iproute are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fixe these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.74. iptables

Updated iptables packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The iptables utility controls the network packet filtering code in the Linux kernel. The utility allows users to perform certain operations such as setting up firewalls or IP masquerading.

Bug Fixes

BZ#924362
A previous version of iptables added the "alternatives" functionality support for the /lib/xtables/ or /lib64/xtables/ directory. However, iptables failed to replace the directory with the alternatives slave symbolic link when upgrading iptables with the "yum upgrade" command and the directory contained custom plug-in files. Consequently, some iptables modules became unavailable. This problem has been fixed by modifying the iptables spec file so that the /lib/xtables/ or /lib64/xtables/ directory is no longer managed by "alternatives".
BZ#983198
The iptables-save command previously supported only the "--modprobe=" option to specify the path to the modprobe executable. However, the iptables-save(8) man page incorrectly stated that this action could have been performed using an unsupported option, "-M", which could lead to confusion. The iptables-save command has been modified to support the "-M" option for specifying the path to modprobe, and corrects the iptables-save(8) man page, which now correctly mentions both the "-M" and "--modprobe=" option.
BZ#1007632
Due to a bug in the iptables init script, the system could become unresponsive during shutdown when using the network-based root device and the default filter for INPUT or OUTPUT policy was DROP. This problem has been fixed by setting the default chain policy to ACCEPT before flushing the iptables rules and deleting the iptables chains.

Enhancements

BZ#845435
The iptables utility has been modified to support a new option, "--queue-bypass", which allows bypassing an NFQUEUE rule if the specified queue is not used.
BZ#928812
A new iptables service option,"reload", has been added to enable a refresh of the firewall rules without unloading netfilter kernel modules and a possible drop of connections.
Users of iptables are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.75. ipvsadm

Updated ipvsadm packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The ipvsadm package provides the ipsvadm tool to administer the IP Virtual Server services offered by the Linux kernel.

Note

The ipvsadm packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.26, which provides new features to IPVS from the kernel side, which take full-advantage of PE config of SIP PE-data. In addition, this update:
* fixes the "One Packet Scheduler" output for the status and save operations to include all Virtual Servers instead of only those configured with a persistent flag (BZ#986189)
* addresses a possible, but very unlikely, memory corruption issues;
* includes minor improvements to the manual pages related to ipvsadm.
Users of ipvsadm are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.76. irqbalance

Updated irqbalance packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The irqbalance packages provide a daemon that evenly distributes interrupt request (IRQ) load across multiple CPUs for enhanced performance.

Bug Fixes

BZ#951720
Previously, irqbalance warned about MSI interrupts, and that IRQs would not be properly classified due to the use of a kernel version older than kernel-2.6.32-279. This update blocks users from using irqbalance with an older version of the kernel, without features required for processing MSI interrupts, and warning messages are no longer received.
BZ#975524
Due to recent changes in the irqbalance packages, the /var/run/irqbalance.pid file was not created upon start of the irqbalance service, causing irqbalance to become non-compliant with the Linux Standard Base (LSB) specification. This update provides a patch fixing this problem so the irqbalance packages are LSB compliant again.
BZ#991363
A bug in the irqbalance code caused the irqbalance daemon to terminate with a segmentation fault when a CPU was hot plugged or hot unplugged. This update fixes a corrupted IRQ rebalance list and the irqbalance daemon no longer crashes in this scenario.
Users of irqbalance are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

8.77. iscsi-initiator-utils

Updated iscsi-initiator-utils packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The iscsi-initiator-utils packages provide the server daemon for the iSCSI protocol, as well as utilities used to manage the daemon. iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) is a protocol for distributed disk access using SCSI commands sent over Internet Protocol networks.

Note

The iscsi-initiator-utils packages have been upgraded to upstream version 6.2.0.873, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#916007)

Bug Fixes

BZ#884427
Previously, database errors could occur if multiple node records in different formats were created for the same iSCSI target portal. Consequently, depending on the file system dependent return order of the readdir syscall, an error occasionally occurred causing an update operation to fail. To fix this bug, multiple node records in different formats have been prevented from existing simultaneously and detected at record creation time. Duplicate node entries no longer exist in the iSCSI database, and updates to records do not result in database errors.
BZ#983553
Prior to this update, a single unreachable target could previously block rescans of others. Consequently, the iscsiadm utility could halt in the D state and the rest of the targets could remain unscanned. To fix this bug, iscsiadm has been made terminable and all the targets have been updated. Now, functioning sessions will be rescanned properly without long delays.
BZ#1001705
When VDMS (Virtual Desktop Server Manager) attempted to add a new record to the iSCSI database, it failed with the following error:
iscsiadm: Error while adding record: no available memory.
Consequently, due to this error, the host became non-operational when connecting to storage. An upstream patch has been applied and the /var/lib/iscsi file is now successfully attached.

Enhancements

BZ#831003
For the bnx2i hardware and potentially other offloading solutions (complementary network technologies for delivering data originally targeted for cellular networks), the iscsistart tool for passing along the VLAN tag from iBFT (iSCSI Boot Firmware Table) to iface_rec (iscsi iface record name) has been implemented to this package.
BZ#917600
With this update, support for managing Flash nodes from the open-iscsi utility has been added to this package.
Users of iscsi-initiator-utils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.78. iw

Updated iw packages that add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The iw command-line utility is used for configuring wireless devices based on the nl80211 interface.

Note

The iw packages have been upgraded to upstream version 3.10, which provides one enhancement over the previous version. This update adds support for Wake on Wireless LAN (WoWLAN) to Atheros WiFi interfaces in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. (BZ#951706)
Users of iw are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which add this enhancement.

8.79. java-1.6.0-openjdk

Updated java-1.6.0-openjdk packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The java-1.6.0-openjdk packages provide the OpenJDK 6 Java Runtime Environment and the OpenJDK 6 Java Software Development Kit.

Note

The java-1.6.0-openjdk packages have been upgraded to upstream IcedTea version 1.13.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#983411)

Bug Fix

BZ#976897
Previously, int[] objects allocated by instances of the com.sun.imageio.plugins.jpeg.JPEGImageWriter class were consuming extensive amounts of memory, which was consequently not released. With this update, the underlying stream processing logic has been modified to ensure correct releasing of such memory, and extensive memory consumption no longer occurs.
Users of java-1.6.0-openjdk are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements. All running instances of OpenJDK Java must be restarted for the update to take effect.

8.80. java-1.7.0-openjdk

Updated java-1.7.0-openjdk packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The java-1.7.0-openjdk packages provide the OpenJDK 7 Java Runtime Environment and the OpenJDK 7 Software Development Kit.

Note

The java-1.7.0-openjdk package has been upgraded to upstream version 2.4.3, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version.

Bug Fixes

BZ#825824
Attempting to compile a SystemTap script using the jstack tapset could have failed with an error similar to the following:
error: the frame size of 272 bytes is larger than 256 bytes
This update corrects the jstack tapset and resolves this problem.
BZ#871771
Because of incorrect KDC list concatenation logic, the sun.security.krb5.Config.getKDCList method returned incorrect KDC lists when the dns_lookup_kdc property in the krb5.conf file was set to true. The concatenation logic has been fixed with this release and correct KDC lists are now returned.
BZ#997633
The java-1.7.0-openjdk RPM package contained incorrect specification of the libnss3 dependency and installed its x86_64 version on i686 systems. Because of the missing dependency, launching the java command with the -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote parameter on 32bit JVMs terminated unexpectedly. The dependency specification has been corrected with this update. As a result, the correct version of the libnss3 package is installed and the java command no longer terminates when launched with the -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote parameter.

Enhancements

BZ#831734, BZ#905128
The NSS security provider is now the default security provider in OpenJDK 7. This brings a significant performance improvement over the previous releases.
BZ#916288
The java-1.7.0-openjdk RPM package now provides the java dependency. As a result, it is no longer necessary to have the java-1.6.0-openjdk package installed alongside java-1.7.0-openjdk for the java dependency to be available.
Users of java-1.7.0-openjdk are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements. All running instances of OpenJDK Java must be restarted for the update to take effect.

8.81. kde-settings

Updated kde-settings packages that fix one bug are now available.
The kde-settings packages provide a rich set of administration panels to configure system and desktop settings in the Konqueror Desktop Environment (KDE).

Bug Fix

BZ#886237
The Konqueror browser enabled Java support by default. Because Java is one of the common targets for browser-based malware attacks, Java is now disabled by default in Konqueror.
To enable Java in Konqueror, navigate to Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Java & JavaScript (which sets the path to Java), and select the "Enable Java globally" check box.
Users of kde-settings are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.82. kernel

Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Extended Update Support.
Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-3673, CVE-2014-3687, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's SCTP implementation handled malformed or duplicate Address Configuration Change Chunks (ASCONF). A remote attacker could use either of these flaws to crash the system.
CVE-2014-3688, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's SCTP implementation handled the association's output queue. A remote attacker could send specially crafted packets that would cause the system to use an excessive amount of memory, leading to a denial of service.
CVE-2014-5045, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's VFS subsystem handled reference counting when performing unmount operations on symbolic links. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to exhaust all available memory on the system or, potentially, trigger a use-after-free error, resulting in a system crash or privilege escalation.
CVE-2014-4608, Low
An integer overflow flaw was found in the way the lzo1x_decompress_safe() function of the Linux kernel's LZO implementation processed Literal Runs. A local attacker could, in extremely rare cases, use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
Red Hat would like to thank Vasily Averin of Parallels for reporting CVE-2014-5045, and Don A. Bailey from Lab Mouse Security for reporting CVE-2014-4608. The CVE-2014-3673 issue was discovered by Liu Wei of Red Hat.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1108360
Before this update, under certain conditons, the kernel timer could cause the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) driver to become unresponsive, resulting in high CPU load. With this update, a patch has been applied, and the IPMI driver no longer hangs.
BZ#1109270, BZ#1109712
Previously, when error recovery was restarted, the Orthonormal Basis Functions (OBF) timer in the KCS driver was not reset, which led to an immediate timeout. As a consequence, these timing issues caused caused ipmi to become unresponsive. In addition, numerous error messages were filling up the /var/log/messages file and causing high CPU usage. With this update, patches have been applied to fix this bug, and ipmi no longer hangs in the described situation.
BZ#1135993
Due to certain kernel changes, the TCP Small Queues (TSQ) process did not handle Nagle's algorithm properly when a TCP session became throttled. The underlying source code has been patched, and Nagle's algorithm now works correctly in TSQ.
BZ#1140976
Before this update, due to a bug in the error-handling path, corrupted metadata block could be used as a valid block. With this update, the error handling path is fixed and more checks are added to verify the metadata block. Now, when a corrupted metadata block is encountered, it is properly marked as corrupted and handled accordingly.
BZ#1154087, BZ#1158321
Previously, log forces with relatively little free stack available occurred deep in the call chain. As a consequence, a stack overflew in the (XFS) file system and the system could terminate unexpectedly. To fix this bug, moving log forces to a work queue relieves the stack pressure and avoids the system crash.
BZ#1158324
Before this update, TCP transmit interrupts could not be set lower than the default of 8 buffered tx frames, which under certain conditions led to TCP transmit delays occurring on ixgbe adapters. With this update, code change removes the restriction of minimum 8 buffered frames and now allows minimum of 1 frame a transmit to occur. And as a result, transmit delays are now minimized.
BZ#1165984
Previously, a coding error in Ethernet 100 driver update caused improper initialization for certain Physical Layers (PHYs) and return of RX errors. With this update, the coding error has been fixed, and the device driver works properly.
BZ#1158327
Before this update, the frame buffer (offb) driver did not support setting of the color palette registers on the QEMU standard VGA adapter, which caused incorrect color displaying. The offb driver has been updated for the QEMU standard VGA adapter, fixing the color issues.
BZ#1142569
Before this update, several race conditions occurred between PCI error recovery callbacks and potential calls of the ifup and ifdown commands in the tg3 driver. When triggered, these race conditions could cause unexpected kernel termination. This bug has been fixed, and the kernel no longer crashes.
BZ#1158889, BZ#1162748
Due to hardware bug conditions during Top Segmentation Offload (TSO) fragment processing, there was a page allocation failure in kernel and packets were not transmitted. With this update, more generic Generic Segmentation Offload (GSO) is used as a fallback when TSO fragment processing fails, and packets are now successfully transmitted.
BZ#1163397
Previously, the kernel became unresponsive when using a zombie PID and cgroup. To fix this bug, a patch has been applied, and the kernel no longer hangs.
BZ#1165000
Previously, under certain error conditions gfs2_converter introduced incorrect values for the on-disk inode's di_goal_meta field. As a consequence, gfs2_converter returned the EBADSLT error on such inodes and did not allow creation of the new files in directories or new blocks in regular files. The fix allows gfs2_converter to set a sensible goal value if a corrupt one is encountered and proceed with normal operations. With this update, gfs2_converter implicitly fixes any corrupt goal values, and thus no longer disrupts normal operations.
BZ#1169403
Previously, certain error conditions led to messages being sent to system logs. These messages could become lost instead of being logged, or repeated messages were not suppressed. In extreme cases, the resulting logging volume could cause system lockups or other problems. The relevant test has been reversed to fix this bug, and frequent messages are now suppressed and infrequent messages logged as expected.

Enhancement

BZ#1167209
This update adds fixes from Emulex and Oracle Enterprise Management (OEM) qualifications including latest fixes for Skyhawk hardware to the Emulex be2iscsi driver.
Users of kernel are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add this enhancement. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue, several bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Extended Update Support.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link associated with the description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-5077, Important
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation handled simultaneous connections between the same hosts. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1110839
Due to a bug in the kernel signal handling, the decimal floating point (DFP) operations could have been executed with an incorrect rounding mode. As a consequence, DFP calculations could return incorrect or corrupted results. This update fixes this problem by replacing a simple bit mask that was previously used to verify validity of some values in the floating point control register. The bit mask is replaced by a trial load of the floating point control register.
BZ#1140163
Previously, when freeing a large number of huge pages (several TB), the kernel could experience soft lockup events. This could possibly result in performance problems. The memory management code has been modified to increase a chance of a context switch in this situation, which prevents occurrence of soft lockup events.
BZ#1122102
A bug in the nouveau driver could prevent the main display of a Lenovo ThinkPad W530 laptop from being initialized after the system was resumed from suspend. This happened if the laptop had an external screen that was detached while the system was suspended. This problem has been fixed by backporting an upstream patch related to the DisplayPort interface.
BZ#1139807
Due to race conditions in the IP Virtual server (IPVS) code, the kernel could trigger a general protection fault when running the IPVS connection synchronization daemon. With this update, the race conditions in the IPVS code have been addressed, and the kernel no longer crashes when running the IPVS daemon.
BZ#1139345
The kernel could sometimes panic due to a possible division by zero in the kernel scheduler. This bug has been fixed by defining a new div64_ul() division function and correcting the affected calculation in the proc_sched_show_task() function.
BZ#1125980
Removing the rtsc_pci_ms kernel module on some Lenovo ThinkPad series laptops could result in a kernel panic. This update resolves this problem by correcting a bug in the base drivers function, platform_uevent().
BZ#1125994
A bug in the Linux Netpoll API could result in a kernel oops if the system had the netconsole service configured over a bonding device. With this update, incorrect flag usage in the netpoll_poll_dev() function has been fixed and the kernel no longer crashes due to this bug.
BZ#1127580
The kernel did not handle exceptions caused by an invalid floating point control (FPC) register, resulting in a kernel oops. This problem has been fixed by placing the label to handle these exceptions to the correct place in the code.
BZ#1138301
Previously, certain network device drivers did not accept ethtool commands right after they were mounted. As a consequence, the current setting of the specified device driver was not applied and an error message was returned. The ETHTOOL_DELAY variable has been added, which makes sure the ethtool utility waits for some time before it tries to apply the options settings, thus fixing the bug.
BZ#1130630
A rare race between the file system unmount code and the file system notification code could lead to a kernel panic. With this update, a series of patches has been applied to the kernel to prevent this problem.
BZ#1131137
A bug in the bio layer could prevent user space programs from writing data to disk when the system run under heavy RAM memory fragmentation conditions. This problem has been fixed by modifying a respective function in the bio layer to refuse to add a new memory page only if the page would start a new memory segment and the maximum number of memory segments has already been reached.
BZ#1135713
Due to a bug in the ext3 code, the fdatasync() system call did not force the inode size change to be written to the disk if it was the only metadata change in the file. This could result in the wrong inode size and possible data loss if the system terminated unexpectedly. The code handling inode updates has been fixed and fdatasync() now writes data to the disk as expected in this situation.
BZ#1134258
Previously, the openvswitch driver did not handle frames that contained multiple VLAN headers correctly, which could result in a kernel panic. This update fixes the problem and ensures that openvswitch process such frames correctly.
BZ#1134696
Later Intel CPUs added a new "Condition Changed" bit to the MSR_CORE_PERF_GLOBAL_STATUS register. Previously, the kernel falsely assumed that this bit indicates a performance interrupt, which prevented other NMI handlers from running and executing. To fix this problem, a patch has been applied to the kernel to ignore this bit in the perf code, enabling other NMI handlers to run.
BZ#1135393
After the VLAN devices over the virtio_net driver were allowed to use the TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) feature, the segmentation of packets was moved from virtual machines to the host. However, some devices cannot handle TSO using the 8021q module, and are breaking the packets, which resulted in very low throughput (less than 1 Mbps) and transmission of broken packets over the wire. Until this problem is properly fixed, a patch that allows using of the TSO feature has been reverted; the segmentation is now performed again on virtual machines as and the network throughput is normal.
BZ#1141165
Due to a race condition in the IP Virtual server (IPVS) code, the kernel could trigger a panic when processing packets from the same connection on different CPUs. This update adds missing spin locks to the code that hashes and unhashes connections from the connection table, and ensures that all packets from the same connection are processed by a single CPU.
BZ#1129994
Previously, small block random I/O operations on IBM Power 8 machines using Emulex 16 Gb Fibre Channel (FC) Host Bus Adapter (HBA) could become unresponsive due to a bug in the lpfc driver. To fix this problem, a memory barrier has been added to the lpfc code to ensure that a valid bit is read before the CQE payload.
BZ#1126681
Running the "bridge link show" command on a system with configured bridge devices could trigger a kernel panic. This happened because all RTNL message types were not properly unregistered from the bridge module registers. This update ensures that both RTNL message types are correctly unregistered and the kernel panic no longer occurs in this situation.
BZ#1114406
Previously, the NFS server did not handle correctly situations when multiple NFS clients were appending data to a file using write delegations, and the data might become corrupted. This update fixes this bug by adjusting a NFS cache validity check in the relevant NFS code, and the file accessed in this scenario now contains valid data.
BZ#1131977
Previously, the IPv4 routing code allowed the IPv4 garbage collector to run in parallel on multiple CPUs with the exact configuration. This could greatly decrease performance of the system, and eventually result in soft lockups after the system reached certain load. To resolve this problem and improve performance of the garbage collector, the collector has been moved to the work queue where it is run asynchronously.

Enhancements

BZ#1133834
A new "nordirplus" option has been implemented for the exportfs utility for NFSv3. This option allows the user to disable READDIRPLUS requests for the given NFSv3 export, and thus prevent unwanted disk access in certain scenarios.
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add this enhancement. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-0205, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled reference counting when requeuing futexes during futex_wait(). A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to zero out the reference counter of an inode or an mm struct that backs up the memory area of the futex, which could lead to a use-after-free flaw, resulting in a system crash or, potentially, privilege escalation.
CVE-2014-3535, Important
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's networking implementation handled logging while processing certain invalid packets coming in via a VxLAN interface. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system by sending a specially crafted packet to such an interface.
CVE-2014-3917, Moderate
An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the Linux kernel's system call auditing implementation. On a system with existing audit rules defined, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to leak kernel memory to user space or, potentially, crash the system.
CVE-2014-4667, Moderate
An integer underflow flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation processed certain COOKIE_ECHO packets. By sending a specially crafted SCTP packet, a remote attacker could use this flaw to prevent legitimate connections to a particular SCTP server socket to be made.
Red Hat would like to thank Gopal Reddy Kodudula of Nokia Siemens Networks for reporting CVE-2014-4667. The security impact of the CVE-2014-0205 issue was discovered by Mateusz Guzik of Red Hat.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1089359
Previously, NFSv4 allowed an NFSv4 client to resume an expired or lost file lock. This could result in file corruption if the file was modified in the meantime. This problem has been resolved by a series of patches ensuring that an NFSv4 client no longer attempts to recover expired or lost file locks.
BZ#1090613
A false positive bug in the NFSv4 code could result in a situation where an NFS4ERR_BAD_STATEID error was being resent in an infinite loop instead of a bad state ID being recovered. To fix this problem, a series of patches has been applied to the NFSv4 code. The NFS client no longer retries an I/O operation that resulted in a bad state ID error if the nfs4_select_rw_stateid() function returns an -EIO error.
BZ#1120651
A previous change to the Open vSwitch kernel module introduced a use-after-free problem that resulted in a kernel panic on systems that use this module. This update ensures that the affected object is freed on the correct place in the code, thus avoiding the problem.
BZ#1118782
Previously, the Huge Translation Lookaside Buffer (HugeTLB) unconditionally allowed access to huge pages. However, huge pages may be unsupported in some environments, such as a KVM guest on the PowerPC architecture when not backed by huge pages, and an attempt to use a base page as a huge page in memory would result in a kernel oops. This update ensures that HugeTLB denies access to huge pages if the huge pages are not supported on the system.
BZ#1096397
NFSv4 incorrectly handled a situation when an NFS client received an NFS4ERR_ADMIN_REVOKED error after sending a CLOSE operation. As a consequence, the client kept sending the same CLOSE operation indefinitely although it was receiving NFS4ERR_ADMIN_REVOKED errors. A patch has been applied to the NFSv4 code to ensure that the NFS client sends the particular CLOSE operation only once in this situation.
BZ#1099607
NFS previously called the drop_nlink() function after removing a file to directly decrease a link count on the related inode. Consequently, NFS did not revalidate an inode cache, and could thus use a stale file handle, resulting in an ESTALE error. A patch has been applied to ensure that NFS validates the inode cache correctly after removing a file.
BZ#1117582
A previous change to the SCSI code fixed a race condition that could occur when removing a SCSI device. However, that change caused performance degradation because it used a certain function from the block layer code that was returning different values compared with later versions of the kernel. This update alters the SCSI code to properly utilize the values returned by the block layer code.
BZ#1102794
Previously, when using a bridge interface configured on top of a bonding interface, the bonding driver was not aware of IP addresses assigned to the bridge. Consequently, with ARP monitoring enabled, the ARP monitor could not target the IP address of the bridge when probing the same subnet. The bridge was thus always reported as being down and could not be reached. With this update, the bonding driver has been made aware of IP addresses assigned to a bridge configured on top of a bonding interface, and the ARP monitor can now probe the bridge as expected. Note that the problem still occurs if the arp_validate option is used. Therefore, do not use this option in this case until this issue is fully resolved.
BZ#1113824
The automatic route cache rebuilding feature could incorrectly compute the length of a route hash chain if the cache contained multiple entries with the same key but a different TOS, mark, or OIF bit. Consequently, the feature could reach the rebuild limit and disable the routing cache on the system. This problem is fixed by using a helper function that avoids counting such duplicate routes.
BZ#1121541
Due to a race condition that allowed a RAID array to be written to while it was being stopped, the md driver could enter a deadlock situation. The deadlock prevented buffers from being written out to the disk, and all I/O operations to the device became unresponsive. With this update, the md driver has been modified so this deadlock is now avoided.
BZ#1112226
When booting a guest in the Hyper-V environment and enough of Programmable Interval Timer (PIT) interrupts were lost or not injected into the guest on time, the kernel panicked and the guest failed to boot. This problem has been fixed by bypassing the relevant PIT check when the guest is running under the Hyper-V environment.
All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-2851, Important
A use-after-free flaw was found in the way the ping_init_sock() function of the Linux kernel handled the group_info reference counter. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2014-6647, Moderate
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way the futex_wait_requeue_pi() function of the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled the requeuing of certain Priority Inheritance (PI) futexes. A local, unprivileged user could us this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2014-7339, Moderate
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the rds_ib_laddr_check() function in the Linux kernel's implementation of Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS). A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2014-2672, Moderate
It was found that a remote attacker could use a race condition flaw in the ath_tx_aggr_sleep() function to crash the system by creating large network traffic on the system's Atheros 9k wireless network adapter.
CVE-2014-2678, Moderate
A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the rds_iw_laddr_check() function in the Linux kernel's implementation of Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS). A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2014-2706, Moderate
A race condition flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's mac80211 subsystem implementation handled synchronization between TX and STA wake-up code paths. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2014-3144, CVE-2014-3145, Moderate
An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the Netlink Attribute extension of the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) interpreter functionality in the Linux kernel's networking implementation. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or leak kernel memory to user space via a specially crafted socket filter.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1107503
Due to a bug in the mount option parser, prefix paths on a CIFS DFS share could be prepended with a double backslash ('\\'), resulting in an incorrect "No such file" error in certain environments. The mount option parser has been fixed and prefix paths now starts with a single backslash as expected.
BZ#1110170, BZ#1110169, BZ#1110168, BZ#1109885, BZ#1109883
Several concurrency problems, that could result in data corruption, were found in the implementation of CTR and CBC modes of operation for AES, DES, and DES3 algorithms on IBM S/390 systems. Specifically, a working page was not protected against concurrency invocation in CTR mode. The fallback solution for not getting a working page in CTR mode did not handle iv values correctly. The CBC mode used did not properly save and restore the key and iv values in some concurrency situations. All these problems have been addressed in the code and the concurrent use of the aforementioned algorithms no longer cause data corruption.
BZ#1090749
In cluster environment, the multicast traffic from the guest to a host could be sometimes unreliable. An attempt to resolve this problem was made with the RHSA-2013-1645 advisory, however, that attempt introduced a regression. This update reverts patches for this problem provided by RHSA-2013-1645 and introduces a new fix of the problem. The problem has been resolved by flooding the network with multicast packets if the multicast querier is disabled and no other querier has been detected.
BZ#1106472
The bridge MDB RTNL handlers were incorrectly removed after deleting a bridge from the system with more then one bridge configured. This led to various problems, such as that the multicast IGMP snooping data from the remaining bridges were not displayed. This update ensures that the bridge handlers are removed only after the bridge module is unloaded, and the multicast IGMP snooping data now displays correctly in the described situation.
BZ#1100574
Due to a bug in the nouveau kernel module, the wrong display output could be modified in certain multi-display configurations. Consequently, on Lenovo Thinkpad T420 and W530 laptops with an external display connected, this could result in the LVDS panel "bleeding" to white during startup, and the display controller might become non-functional until after a reboot. Changes to the display configuration could also trigger the bug under various circumstances. With this update, the nouveau kernel module has been corrected and the said configurations now work as expected.
BZ#1103821
When guest supports Supervisor Mode Execution Protection (SMEP), KVM sets the appropriate permissions bits on the guest page table entries (sptes) to emulate SMEP enforced access. Previously, KVM was incorrectly verifying whether the "smep" bit was set in the host cr4 register instead of the guest cr4 register. Consequently, if the host supported SMEP, it was enforced even though it was not requested, which could render the guest system unbootable. This update corrects the said "smep" bit check and the guest system boot as expected in this scenario.
BZ#1096059
Previously, if a hrtimer interrupt was delayed, all future pending hrtimer events that were queued on the same processor were also delayed until the initial hrtimer event was handled. This could cause all hrtimer processing to stop for a significant period of time. To prevent this problem, the kernel has been modified to handle all expired hrtimer events when handling the initially delayed hrtimer event.
BZ#1099725
Previously, hardware could execute commands send by drivers in FIFO order instead of tagged order. Commands thus could be executed out of sequence, which could result in large latencies and degradation of throughput. With this update, the ATA subsystem tags each command sent to the hardware, ensuring that the hardware executes commands in tagged order. Performance on controllers supporting tagged commands can now increase by 30-50%.
BZ#1107931
Due to a bug in the GRE tunneling code, it was impossible to create a GRE tunnel with a custom name. This update corrects behavior of the ip_tunnel_find() function, allowing users to create GRE tunnels with custom names.
BZ#1110658
The qla2xxx driver has been upgraded to version 8.05.00.03.06.5-k2, which provides a number of bug fixes over the previous version in order to correct various timeout problems with the mailbox command.
BZ#1093984
The kernel previously did not reset the kernel ring buffer if the trace clock was changed during tracing. However, the new clock source could be inconsistent with the previous clock source, and the result trace record thus could contain incomparable time stamps. To ensure that the trace record contains only comparable time stamps, the ring buffer is now reset whenever the trace clock changes.
BZ#1103972
Previously, KVM did not accept PCI domain (segment) number for host PCI devices, making it impossible to assign a PCI device that was a part of a non-zero PCI segment to a virtual machine. To resolve this problem, KVM has been extended to accept PCI domain number in addition to slot, device, and function numbers.

Enhancement

BZ#1094403
Users can now set ToS, TTL, and priority values in IPv4 on per-packet basis.
All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-3153, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's futex subsystem handled the requeuing of certain Priority Inheritance (PI) futexes. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2014-1737, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's floppy driver handled user space provided data in certain error code paths while processing FDRAWCMD IOCTL commands. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to free (using the kfree() function) arbitrary kernel memory.
CVE-2014-1738, Low
It was found that the Linux kernel's floppy driver leaked internal kernel memory addresses to user space during the processing of the FDRAWCMD IOCTL command. A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use this flaw to obtain information about the kernel heap arrangement.

Note

A local user with write access to /dev/fdX could use these two flaws (CVE-2014-1737 in combination with CVE-2014-1738) to escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2014-0203, Moderate
It was discovered that the proc_ns_follow_link() function did not properly return the LAST_BIND value in the last pathname component as is expected for procfs symbolic links, which could lead to excessive freeing of memory and consequent slab corruption. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2014-2039, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel handled exceptions when user-space applications attempted to use the linkage stack. On IBM S/390 systems, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system.
CVE-2013-6378, Low
An invalid pointer dereference flaw was found in the Marvell 8xxx Libertas WLAN (libertas) driver in the Linux kernel. A local user able to write to a file that is provided by the libertas driver and located on the debug file system (debugfs) could use this flaw to crash the system. Note: The debugfs file system must be mounted locally to exploit this issue. It is not mounted by default.
CVE-2014-1874, Low
A denial of service flaw was discovered in the way the Linux kernel's SELinux implementation handled files with an empty SELinux security context. A local user who has the CAP_MAC_ADMIN capability could use this flaw to crash the system.
Red Hat would like to thank Kees Cook of Google for reporting CVE-2014-3153, Matthew Daley for reporting CVE-2014-1737 and CVE-2014-1738, and Vladimir Davydov of Parallels for reporting CVE-2014-0203. Google acknowledges Pinkie Pie as the original reporter of CVE-2014-3153.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1086839
Due to a ndlp list corruption bug in the lpfc driver, systems with Emulex LPe16002B-M6 PCIe 2-port 16Gb Fibre Channel Adapters could trigger a kernel panic during I/O operations. A series of patches has been backported to address this problem so the kernel no longer panics during I/O operations on the aforementioned systems.
BZ#1096214
A previous change enabled receive acceleration for VLAN interfaces configured on a bridge interface. However, this change allowed VLAN-tagged packets to bypass the bridge and be delivered directly to the VLAN interfaces. This update ensures that the traffic is correctly processed by a bridge before it is passed to any VLAN interfaces configured on that bridge.
BZ#1090750
A previous change that introduced global clock updates caused guest machines to boot slowly when the host Time Stamp Counter (TSC) was marked as unstable. The slow down increased with the number of vCPUs allocated. To resolve this problem, a patch has been applied to limit the rate of the global clock updates.
BZ#1094287
Due to a bug in the ixgbevf driver, the stripped VLAN information from incoming packets on the ixgbevf interface could be lost, and such packets thus did not reach a related VLAN interface. This problem has been fixed by adding the packet's VLAN information to the Socket Buffer (skb) before passing it to the network stack. As a result, the ixgbevf driver now passes the VLAN-tagged packets to the appropriate VLAN interface.
BZ#1089915
A race condition between completion and timeout handling in the block device code could sometimes trigger a BUG_ON() assertion, resulting in a kernel panic. This update resolves this problem by relocating a relevant function call and the BUG_ON() assertion in the code.
BZ#1088779
Systems that use NFS file systems could become unresponsive or trigger a kernel oops due to a use-after-free bug in the duplicate reply cache (DRC) code in the nfsd daemon. This problem has been resolved by modifying nfsd to unhash DRC entries before attempting to use them and to prefer to allocate a new DRC entry from the slab instead of reusing an expired entry from the list.
BZ#1092002
When an attempt to create a file on the GFS2 file system failed due to a file system quota violation, the relevant VFS inode was not completely uninitialized. This could result in a list corruption error. This update resolves this problem by correctly uninitializing the VFS inode in this situation.
BZ#1069630
Previously, automount could become unresponsive when trying to reconnect to mounts with the direct or offset mount types at system startup. This happened because the device ioctl code did not handle the situation when the relevant caller did not yet own the mount. Also, the umount() command sometimes failed to unmount an NFS file system with the stale root. Both problems have been addressed in the virtual file system code, and automount is now able to mount direct or offset mounts using a new lookup function, kern_path_mountpoint(). The umount() command now handles mount points without their revalidation, which allows the command to unmount NFS file systems with the stale root.
BZ#1091424
The kernel did not handle environmental and power warning (EPOW) interrupts correctly. This prevented successful usage of the "virsh shutdown" command to shut down guests on IBM POWER8 systems. This update ensures that the kernel handles EPOW events correctly and also prints informative descriptions for the respective EPOW events. The detailed information about each encountered EPOW can be found in the Real-Time Abstraction Service (RTAS) error log.
BZ#1081915
Due to a race condition in the cgroup code, the kernel task scheduler could trigger a kernel panic when it was moving an exiting task between cgroups. A patch has been applied to avoid this kernel panic by replacing several improperly used function calls in the cgroup code.
BZ#1081909
An incorrectly placed function call in the cgroup code prevented the notify_on_release functionality from working properly. This functionality is used to remove empty cgroup directories, however due to this bug, some empty cgroup directories were remaining on the system. This update ensures that the notify_on_release functionality is always correctly triggered by correctly ordering operations in the cgroup_task_migrate() function.
BZ#1081914
Due to a race condition in the cgroup code, the kernel task scheduler could trigger a use-after-free bug when it was moving an exiting task between cgroups, which resulted in a kernel panic. This update avoids the kernel panic by introducing a new function, cpu_cgroup_exit(). This function ensures that the kernel does not release a cgroup that is not empty yet.
BZ#1079869
Due to a bug in the hrtimers subsystem, the clock_was_set() function called an inter-processor interrupt (IPI) from soft IRQ context and waited for its completion, which could result in a deadlock situation. A patch has been applied to fix this problem by moving the clock_was_set() function call to the working context. Also during the resume process, the hrtimers_resume() function reprogrammed kernel timers only for the current CPU because it assumed that all other CPUs are offline. However, this assumption was incorrect in certain scenarios, such as when resuming a Xen guest with some non-boot CPUs being only stopped with IRQs disabled. As a consequence, kernel timers were not corrected on other than the boot CPU even though those CPUs were online. To resolve this problem, hrtimers_resume() has been modified to trigger an early soft IRQ to correctly reprogram kernel timers on all CPUs that are online.
BZ#1080104
Due to a previous change that altered the format of the txselect parameter, the InfiniBand qib driver was unable to support HP branded QLogic QDR InfiniBand cards in HP Blade servers. To resolve this problem, the driver's parsing routine, setup_txselect(), has been modified to handle multi-value strings.
BZ#1075653
A previous change to the virtual file system (VFS) code included the reduction of the PATH_MAX variable by 32 bytes. However, this change was not propagated to the do_getname() function, which had a negative impact on interactions between the getname() and do_getname() functions. This update modifies do_getname() accordingly and this function now works as expected.
BZ#1082622
Previously, in certain environments, such as an HP BladeSystem Enclosure with several Blade servers, the kdump kernel could experience a kernel panic or become unresponsive during boot due to lack of available interrupt vectors. As a consequence, kdump failed to capture a core dump. To increase a number of available interrupt vectors, the kdump kernel can boot up with more CPUs. However, the kdump kernel always tries to boot up with the bootstrap processor (BSP), which can cause the kernel to fail to bring up more than one CPU under certain circumstances. This update introduces a new kernel parameter, disable_cpu_acipid, which allows the kdump kernel to disable BSP during boot and then to successfully boot up with multiple processors. This resolves the problem of lack of available interrupt vectors for systems with a high number of devices and ensures that kdump can now successfully capture a core dump on these systems.
BZ#1091826
A previous patch to the kernel scheduler fixed a kernel panic caused by a divide-by-zero bug in the init_numa_sched_groups_power() function. However, that patch introduced a regression on systems with standard Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) topology so that cpu_power in all but one NUMA domains was set to twice the expected value. This resulted in incorrect task scheduling and some processors being left idle even though there were enough queued tasks to handle, which had a negative impact on system performance. This update ensures that cpu_power on systems with standard NUMA topology is set to expected values by adding an estimate to cpu_power for every uncounted CPU.Task scheduling now works as expected on these systems without performance issues related to the said bug.
BZ#1092870
The RTM_NEWLINK messages can contain information about every virtual function (VF) for the given network interface (NIC) and can become very large if this information is not filtered. Previously, the kernel netlink interface allowed the getifaddr() function to process RTM_NEWLINK messages with unfiltered content. Under certain circumstances, the kernel netlink interface would omit data for the given group of NICs, causing getifaddr() to loop indefinitely being unable to return information about the affected NICs. This update resolves this problem by supplying only the RTM_NEWLINK messages with filtered content.
BZ#1063508
The ext4_releasepage() function previously emitted an unnecessary warning message when it was passed a page with the PageChecked flag set. To avoid irrelevant warnings in the kernel log, this update removes the related WARN_ON() from the ext4 code.
BZ#1070296
Microsoft Windows 7 KVM guests could become unresponsive during reboot because KVM did not manage to inject an Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) to the guest when handling page faults. To resolve this problem, a series of patches has been applied to the KVM code, ensuring that KVM handles page faults during the reboot of the guest machine as expected.
BZ#1096711
The turbostat utility produced error messages when used on systems with the fourth generation of Intel Core Processors. To fix this problem, the kernel has been updated to provide the C-state residency information for the C8, C9, and C10 C-states.
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix three security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-2523, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's netfilter connection tracking implementation for Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) packets used the skb_header_pointer() function. A remote attacker could use this flaw to send a specially crafted DCCP packet to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2014-6383, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's Adaptec RAID controller (aacraid) checked permissions of compat IOCTLs. A local attacker could use this flaw to bypass intended security restrictions.
CVE-2014-0077, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the handle_rx() function handled large network packets when mergeable buffers were disabled. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host or corrupt QEMU process memory on the host, which could potentially result in arbitrary code execution on the host with the privileges of the QEMU process.
The CVE-2014-0077 issue was discovered by Michael S. Tsirkin of Red Hat.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1078007
Due to recent changes in the Linux memory management, the kernel did not properly handle per-CPU LRU page vectors when hot unplugging CPUs. As a consequence, the page vector of the relevant offline CPU kept memory pages for memory accounting. This prevented the libvirtd daemon from removing the relevant memory cgroup directory upon system shutdown, rendering libvirtd unresponsive. To resolve this problem, the Linux memory management now properly flushes memory pages of offline CPUs from the relevant page vectors.
BZ#1063201
Recent changes in the d_splice_alias() function introduced a bug that allowed d_splice_alias() to return a dentry from a different directory than was the directory being looked up. As a consequence in cluster environment, a kernel panic could be triggered when a directory was being removed while a concurrent cross-directory operation was performed on this directory on another cluster node. This update avoids the kernel panic in this situation by correcting the search logic in the d_splice_alias() function so that the function can no longer return a dentry from an incorrect directory.
BZ#1086095
A system could enter a deadlock situation when the Real-Time (RT) scheduler was moving RT tasks between CPUs and the wakeup_kswapd() function was called on multiple CPUs, resulting in a kernel panic. This problem has been fixed by removing a problematic memory allocation and therefore calling the wakeup_kswapd() function from a deadlock-safe context.
BZ#1086007
Previously some device mapper kernel modules, such as dm-thin, dm-space-map-metadata, and dm-bufio, contained various bugs that had adverse effects on their proper functioning. This update backports several upstream patches that resolve these problems, including a fix for the metadata resizing feature of device mapper thin provisioning (thinp) and fixes for read-only mode for dm-thin and dm-bufio. As a result, the aforementioned kernel modules now contain the latest upstream changes and work as expected.
BZ#1066535
A previous change in the TCP code that extended the "proto" struct with a new function, release_cb(), broke integrity of the kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI). If the core stack called a newly introduced pointer to this function for a module that was compiled against older kernel headers, the call resulted in out-of-bounds access and a subsequent kernel panic. To avoid this problem, the core stack has been modified to recognize a newly introduced slab flag, RHEL_EXTENDED_PROTO. This allows the core stack to safely access the release_cb pointer only for modules that support it.
BZ#1083350
The Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) did not verify whether the CFS period timer is running while throttling tasks on the CFS run queue. Therefore under certain circumstances, the CFS run queue became stuck because the CFS period timer was inactive and could not be restarted. To fix this problem, the CFS now restarts the CFS period timer inside the throttling function if it is inactive.
BZ#1073562
A previous change removed the ZONE_RECLAIM_LOCKED flag from Linux memory management code in order to fix a NUMA node allocation problem in the memory zone reclaim logic. However, the flag removal allowed concurrent page reclaiming within one memory zone, which, under heavy system load, resulted in unwanted spin lock contention and subsequent performance problems (systems became slow or unresponsive). This update resolves this problem by preventing reclaim threads from scanning a memory zone if the zone does not satisfy scanning requirements. Systems under heavy load no longer suffer from CPU overloading but sustain their expected performance.
BZ#1073564
The restart logic for the memory reclaiming with compaction was previously applied on the level of LRU page vectors. This could, however, cause significant latency in memory allocation because memory compaction does not require only memory pages of a certain cgroup but a whole memory zone. This performance issue has been fixed by moving the restart logic to the zone level and restarting the memory reclaim for all memory cgroups in a zone when the compaction requires more free pages from the zone.
BZ#1074855
Previously, the for_each_isci_host() macro was incorrectly defined so it accessed an out-of-range element for a 2-element array. This macro was also wrongly optimized by GCC 4.8 so that it was executed too many times on platforms with two SCU controllers. As a consequence, the system triggered a kernel panic when entering the S3 state, or a kernel oops when removing the isci module. This update corrects the aforementioned macro and the described problems no longer occur.
BZ#1083175
A bug in the vmxnet3 driver allowed potential race conditions to be triggered when the driver was used with the netconsole module. The race conditions allowed the driver's internal NAPI poll routine to run concurrently with the netpoll controller routine, which resulted in data corruption and a subsequent kernel panic. To fix this problem, the vmxnet3 driver has been modified to call the appropriate interrupt handler to schedule NAPI poll requests properly.
BZ#1081908
The kernel task scheduler could trigger a race condition while migrating tasks over CPU cgroups. The race could result in accessing a task that pointed to an incorrect parent task group, causing the system to behave unpredictably, for example to appear being unresponsive. This problem has been resolved by ensuring that the correct task group information is properly stored during the task's migration.
BZ#1076056
A previously backported patch to the XFS code added an unconditional call to the xlog_cil_empty() function. If the XFS file system was mounted with the unsupported nodelaylog option, that call resulted in access to an uninitialized spin lock and a consequent kernel panic. To avoid this problem, the nodelaylog option has been disabled; the option is still accepted but has no longer any effect. (The nodelaylog mount option was originally intended only as a testing option upstream, and has since been removed.)
BZ#1076242
The SCTP sctp_connectx() ABI did not work properly for 64-bit kernels compiled with 32-bit emulation. As a consequence, applications utilizing the sctp_connectx() function did not run in this case. To fix this problem, a new ABI has been implemented; the COMPAT ABI enables to copy and transform user data from a COMPAT-specific structure to a SCTP-specific structure. Applications that require sctp_connectx() now work without any problems on a system with a 64-bit kernel compiled with 32-bit emulation.
BZ#1085660
A bug in the qla2xxx driver caused the kernel to crash. This update resolves this problem by fixing an incorrect condition in the "for" statement in the qla2x00_alloc_iocbs() function.
BZ#1079870
The code responsible for creating and binding of packet sockets was not optimized and therefore applications that utilized the socket() and bind() system calls did not perform as expected. A patch has been applied to the packet socket code so that latency for socket creating and binding is now significantly lower in certain cases.
BZ#1077874
Previously, the vmw_pwscsi driver could attempt to complete a command to the SCSI mid-layer after reporting a successful abort of the command. This led to a double completion bug and a subsequent kernel panic. This update ensures that the pvscsi_abort() function returns SUCCESS only after the abort is completed, preventing the driver from invalid attempts to complete the command.
BZ#1085658
Due to a bug in the mlx4_en module, a data structure related to time stamping could be accessed before being initialized. As a consequence, loading mlx4_en could result in a kernel crash. This problem has been fixed by moving the initiation of the time stamp mechanism to the correct place in the code.
BZ#1078011
Due to a previous change that was refactoring the Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunneling code, the ip_gre module did not work properly. As a consequence, GRE interfaces dropped every packet that had the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) bit set and did not have the ECN-Capable Transport (ECT) bit set. This update reintroduces the ipgre_ecn_decapsulate() function that is now used instead of the IP_ECN_decapsulate() function that was not properly implemented. The ip_gre module now works correctly and GRE devices process all packets as expected.
BZ#1078641
A bug in the megaraid_sas driver could cause the driver to read the hardware status values incorrectly. As a consequence, the RAID card was disabled during the system boot and the system could fail to boot. With this update, the megaraid_sas driver has been corrected to enable the RAID card on system boot as expected.
BZ#1081907
A bug in the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) could, under certain circumstances, trigger a race condition while moving a forking task between cgroups. This race could lead to a free-after-use error and a subsequent kernel panic when a child task was accessed while it was pointing to a stale cgroup of its parent task. A patch has been applied to the CFS to ensure that a child task always points to the valid parent's task group.
BZ#1078874
The Red Hat GFS2 file system previously limited a number of ACL entries per inode to 25. However, this number was insufficient in some cases, causing the setfacl command to fail. This update increases this limit to maximum of 300 ACL entries for the 4 KB block size. If the block size is smaller, this value is adjusted accordingly.
BZ#1085358
Previous patches to the CIFS code introduced a regression that prevented users from mounting a CIFS share using the NetBIOS over TCP service on the port 139. This problem has been fixed by masking off the top byte in the get_rfc1002_length() function.
BZ#1079872
Previously, user space packet capturing libraries, such as libcap, had a limited possibility to determine which Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) extensions are supported by the current kernel. This limitation had a negative effect on VLAN packet filtering that is performed by the tcpdump utility and tcpdump sometimes was not able to capture filtered packets correctly. Therefore, this update introduces a new option, SO_BPF_EXTENSIONS, which can be specified as an argument of the getsockopt() function. This option enables packet capturing tools to obtain information about which BPF extensions are supported by the current kernel. As a result, the tcpdump utility can now capture packets properly.
BZ#1080600
The isci driver previously triggered an erroneous BUG_ON() assertion in case of a hard reset timeout in the sci_apc_agent_link_up() function. If a SATA device was unable to restore the link in time after the reset, the isci port had to return to the "awaiting link-up" state. However in such a case, the port may not have been in the "resetting" state, causing a kernel panic. This problem has been fixed by removing that incorrect BUG_ON() assertion.
BZ#1078798
Previously, when removing an IPv6 address from an interface, unreachable routes related to that address were not removed from the IPv6 routing table. This happened because the IPv6 code used inappropriate function when searching for the routes. To avoid this problem, the IPv6 code has been modified to use the ip6_route_lookup() function instead of rt6_lookup() in this situation. All related routes are now properly deleted from the routing tables when an IPv6 address is removed.
BZ#1075651
If the BIOS returned a negative value for the critical trip point for the given thermal zone during a system boot, the whole thermal zone was invalidated and an ACPI error was printed. However, the thermal zone may still have been needed for cooling. With this update, the ACPI thermal management has been modified to only disable the relevant critical trip point in this situation.
BZ#1075554
When allocating kernel memory, the SCSI device handlers called the sizeof() function with a structure name as its argument. However, the modified files were using an incorrect structure name, which resulted in an insufficient amount of memory being allocated and subsequent memory corruption. This update modifies the relevant sizeof() function calls to rather use a pointer to the structure instead of the structure name so that the memory is now always allocated correctly.
BZ#1069848
A previous change that modified the linkat() system call introduced a mount point reference leak and a subsequent memory leak in case that a file system link operation returned the ESTALE error code. These problems have been fixed by properly freeing the old mount point reference in such a case.
BZ#1086490
The dm-bufio driver did not call the blk_unplug() function to flush plugged I/O requests. Therefore, the requests submitted by dm-bufio were delayed by 3 ms, which could cause performance degradation. With this update, dm-bufio calls blk_unplug() as expected, avoiding any related performance issues.
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2014-0055, Important
A flaw was found in the way the get_rx_bufs() function in the vhost_net implementation in the Linux kernel handled error conditions reported by the vhost_get_vq_desc() function. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host.
CVE-2014-0101, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel processed an authenticated COOKIE_ECHO chunk during the initialization of an SCTP connection. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system by initiating a specially crafted SCTP handshake in order to trigger a NULL pointer dereference on the system.
CVE-2014-0069, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's CIFS implementation handled uncached write operations with specially crafted iovec structures. An unprivileged local user with access to a CIFS share could use this flaw to crash the system, leak kernel memory, or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system. Note: the default cache settings for CIFS mounts on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 prohibit a successful exploitation of this issue.
CVE-2013-1860, Low
A heap-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the Linux kernel's cdc-wdm driver, used for USB CDC WCM device management. An attacker with physical access to a system could use this flaw to cause a denial of service or, potentially, escalate their privileges.
Red Hat would like to thank Nokia Siemens Networks for reporting CVE-2014-0101, and Al Viro for reporting CVE-2014-0069.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1063507
A previous change in the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) code caused a regression on certain Intel CPUs using a Multiprocessor (MP) table. An attempt to read from the local APIC (LAPIC) could be performed before the LAPIC was mapped, resulting in a kernel crash during a system boot. A patch has been applied to fix this problem by mapping the LAPIC as soon as possible when parsing the MP table.
BZ#1067775
When removing an inode from a name space on an XFS file system, the file system could enter a deadlock situation and become unresponsive. This happened because the removal operation incorrectly used the AGF and AGI locks in the opposite order than was required by the ordering constraint, which led to a possible deadlock between the file removal and inode allocation and freeing operations. With this update, the inode's reference count is dropped before removing the inode entry with the first transaction of the removal operation. This ensures that the AGI and AGF locks are locked in the correct order, preventing any further deadlocks in this scenario.
BZ#1064913
Previously, the GFS2 kernel module leaked memory in the gfs2_bufdata slab cache and allowed a use-after-free race condition to be triggered in the gfs2_remove_from_journal() function. As a consequence after unmounting the GFS2 file system, the GFS2 slab cache could still contain some objects, which subsequently could, under certain circumstances, result in a kernel panic. A series of patches has been applied to the GFS2 kernel module, ensuring that all objects are freed from the slab cache properly and the kernel panic is avoided.
BZ#1054072
Due to the locking mechanism that the kernel used while handling Out of Memory (OOM) situations in memory control groups (cgroups), the OOM killer did not work as intended in case that many processes triggered an OOM. As a consequence, the entire system could become or appear to be unresponsive. A series of patches has been applied to improve this locking mechanism so that the OOM killer now works as expected in memory cgroups under heavy OOM load.
BZ#1055364
Previously, certain SELinux functions did not correctly handle the TCP synchronize-acknowledgment (SYN-ACK) packets when processing IPv4 labeled traffic over an INET socket. The initial SYN-ACK packets were labeled incorrectly by SELinux, and as a result, the access control decision was made using the server socket's label instead of the new connection's label. In addition, SELinux was not properly inspecting outbound labeled IPsec traffic, which led to similar problems with incorrect access control decisions. A series of patches that addresses these problems has been applied to SELinux. The initial SYN-ACK packets are now labeled correctly and SELinux processes all SYN-ACK packets as expected.
BZ#1063199
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) feature is automatically disabled if the corresponding network device does not report any CSUM flag in the list of its features. Previously, VLAN devices that were configured over bonding devices did not propagate its NETIF_F_NO_CSUM flag as expected, and their feature lists thus did not contain any CSUM flags. As a consequence, the TSO feature was disabled for these VLAN devices, which led to poor bandwidth performance. With this update, the bonding driver propagates the aforementioned flag correctly so that network traffic now flows through VLAN devices over bonding without any performance problems.
BZ#1064464
Due to a bug in the Infiniband driver, the ip and ifconfig utilities reported the link status of the IP over Infiniband (IPoIB) interfaces incorrectly (as "RUNNING" in case of "ifconfig", and as "UP" in case of "ip") even if no cable was connected to the respective network card. The problem has been corrected by calling the respective netif_carrier_off() function on the right place in the code. The link status of the IPoIB interfaces is now reported correctly in the described situation.
BZ#1058418
When performing read operations on an XFS file system, failed buffer readahead can leave the buffer in the cache memory marked with an error. This could lead to incorrect detection of stale errors during completion of an I/O operation because most callers do not zero out the b_error field of the buffer on a subsequent read. To avoid this problem and ensure correct I/O error detection, the b_error field of the used buffer is now zeroed out before submitting an I/O operation on a file.
BZ#1062113
Previously, when hot adding memory to the system, the memory management subsystem always performed unconditional page-block scans for all memory sections being set online. The total duration of the hot add operation depends on both, the size of memory that the system already has and the size of memory that is being added. Therefore, the hot add operation took an excessive amount of time to complete if a large amount of memory was added or if the target node already had a considerable amount of memory. This update optimizes the code so that page-block scans are performed only when necessary, which greatly reduces the duration of the hot add operation.
BZ#1059991
Due to a bug in the SELinux socket receive hook, network traffic was not dropped upon receiving a peer:recv access control denial on some configurations. A broken labeled networking check in the SELinux socket receive hook has been corrected, and network traffic is now properly dropped in the described case.
BZ#1060491
When transferring a large amount of data over the peer-to-peer (PPP) link, a rare race condition between the throttle() and unthrottle() functions in the tty driver could be triggered. As a consequence, the tty driver became unresponsive, remaining in the throttled state, which resulted in the traffic being stalled. Also, if the PPP link was heavily loaded, another race condition in the tty driver could has been triggered. This race allowed an unsafe update of the available buffer space, which could also result in the stalled traffic. A series of patches addressing both race conditions has been applied to the tty driver; if the first race is triggered, the driver loops and forces re-evaluation of the respective test condition, which ensures uninterrupted traffic flow in the described situation. The second race is now completely avoided due to a well-placed read lock, and the update of the available buffer space proceeds correctly.
BZ#1058420
Previously, the e752x_edac module incorrectly handled the pci_dev usage count, which could reach zero and deallocate a PCI device structure. As a consequence, a kernel panic could occur when the module was loaded multiple times on some systems. This update fixes the usage count that is triggered by loading and unloading the module repeatedly, and a kernel panic no longer occurs.
BZ#1057165
When a page table is upgraded, a new top level of the page table is added for the virtual address space, which results in a new Address Space Control Element (ASCE). However, the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) of the virtual address space was not previously flushed on page table upgrade. As a consequence, the TLB contained entries associated with the old ASCE, which led to unexpected program failures and random data corruption. To correct this problem, the TLB entries associated with the old ASCE are now flushed as expected upon page table upgrade.
BZ#1064115
When a network interface is running in promiscuous (PROMISC) mode, the interface may receive and process VLAN-tagged frames even though no VLAN is attached to the interface. However, the enic driver did not handle processing of the packets with the VLAN-tagged frames in PROMISC mode correctly if the frames had no VLAN group assigned, which led to various problems. To handle the VLAN-tagged frames without a VLAN group properly, the frames have to be processed by the VLAN code, and the enic driver thus no longer verifies whether the packet's VLAN group field is empty.
BZ#1057164
A previous change in the Linux memory management on IBM System z removed the handler for the Address Space Control Element (ASCE) type of exception. As a consequence, the kernel was unable to handle ASCE exceptions, which led to a kernel panic. Such an exception was triggered, for example, if the kernel attempted to access user memory with an address that was larger than the current page table limit from a user-space program. This problem has been fixed by calling the standard page fault handler, do_dat_exception, if an ASCE exception is raised.
BZ#1063271
Due to several bugs in the network console logging, a race condition between the network console send operation and the driver's IRQ handler could occur, or the network console could access invalid memory content. As a consequence, the respective driver, such as vmxnet3, triggered a BUG_ON() assertion and the system terminated unexpectedly. A patch addressing these bugs has been applied so that driver's IRQs are disabled before processing the send operation and the network console now accesses the RCU-protected (read-copy update) data properly. Systems using the network console logging no longer crashes due to the aforementioned conditions.
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues and several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having Important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2013-6381, Important
A buffer overflow flaw was found in the way the qeth_snmp_command() function in the Linux kernel's QETH network device driver implementation handled SNMP IOCTL requests with an out-of-bounds length. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2013-2929, Low
A flaw was found in the way the get_dumpable() function return value was interpreted in the ptrace subsystem of the Linux kernel. When 'fs.suid_dumpable' was set to 2, a local, unprivileged local user could use this flaw to bypass intended ptrace restrictions and obtain potentially sensitive information.
CVE-2013-7263, CVE-2013-7265, Low
It was found that certain protocol handlers in the Linux kernel's networking implementation could set the addr_len value without initializing the associated data structure. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to leak kernel stack memory to user space using the recvmsg, recvfrom, and recvmmsg system calls.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1051393
Due to a bug in the NFS code, the state manager and the DELEGRETURN operation could enter a deadlock if an asynchronous session error was received while DELEGRETURN was being processed by the state manager. The state manager became unable to process the failing DELEGRETURN operation because it was waiting for an asynchronous RPC task to complete, which could not have been completed because the DELEGRETURN operation was cycling indefinitely with session errors. A series of patches has been applied to ensure that the asynchronous error handler waits for recovery when a session error is received and the deadlock no longer occurs.
BZ#1049590
The IPv4 and IPv6 code contained several issues related to the conntrack fragmentation handling that prevented fragmented packages from being properly reassembled. This update applies a series of patches and ensures that MTU discovery is handled properly, and fragments are correctly matched and packets reassembled.
BZ#1046043
Inefficient usage of Big Kernel Locks (BKLs) in the ptrace() system call could lead to BKL contention on certain systems that widely utilize ptrace(), such as User-mode Linux (UML) systems, resulting in degraded performance on these systems. This update removes the relevant BKLs from the ptrace() system call, thus resolving any related performance issues.
BZ#1046041
When utilizing SCTP over the bonding device in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, SCTP assumed offload capabilities on virtual devices where it was not guaranteed that underlying physical devices are equipped with these capabilities. As a consequence, checksums of the outgoing packets became corrupted and a network connection could not be properly established. A patch has been applied to ensure that checksums of the packages to the devices without SCTP checksum capabilities are properly calculated in software fallback. SCTP connections over the bonding devices can now be established as expected in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.
BZ#1044566
The context of the user's process could not be previously saved on PowerPC platforms if the VSX Machine State Register (MSR) bit was set but the user did not provide enough space to save the VSX state. This update allows to clear the VSX MSR bit in such a situation, indicating that there is no valid VSX state in the user context.
BZ#1043779
After a statically defined gateway became unreachable and its corresponding neighbor entry entered a FAILED state, the gateway stayed in the FAILED state even after it became reachable again. As a consequence, traffic was not routed through that gateway. This update enables probing such a gateway automatically so that the traffic can be routed through this gateway again once it becomes reachable.
BZ#1040826
Due to several bugs in the IPv6 code, a soft lockup could occur when the number of cached IPv6 destination entries reached the garbage collector treshold on a high-traffic router. A series of patches has been applied to address this problem. These patches ensure that the route probing is performed asynchronously to prevent a dead lock with garbage collection. Also, the garbage collector is now run asynchronously, preventing CPUs that concurrently requested the garbage collector from waiting until all other CPUs finish the garbage collection. As a result, soft lockups no longer occur in the described situation.
BZ#1035347
A previous change to the md driver disabled the TRIM operation for RAID5 volumes in order to prevent a possible kernel oops. However, if a MD RAID volume was reshaped to a different RAID level, this could result in TRIM being disabled on the resulting volume, as the RAID4 personality is used for certain reshapes. A patch has been applied that corrects this problem by setting the stacking limits before changing a RAID level, and thus ensuring the correct discard (TRIM) granularity for the RAID array.
BZ#1051395
NFS previously allowed a race between "silly rename" operations and the rmdir() function to occur when removing a directory right after an unlinked file in the directory was closed. As a result, rmdir() could fail with an EBUSY error. This update applies a patch ensuring that NFS waits for any asynchronous operations to complete before performing the rmdir() operation.
BZ#1051394
Due to a bug in the EDAC driver, the driver failed to decode and report errors on AMD family 16h processors correctly. This update incorporates a missing case statement to the code so that the EDAC driver now handles errors as expected.
BZ#1045094
A deadlock between the state manager, kswapd daemon, and the sys_open() function could occur when the state manager was recovering from an expired state and recovery OPEN operations were being processed. To fix this problem, NFS has been modified to ignore all errors from the LAYOUTRETURN operation (a pNFS operation) except for "NFS4ERR_DELAY" in this situation.
BZ#1040498
The bnx2x driver handled unsupported TLVs received from a Virtual Function (VF) using the VF-PF channel incorrectly; when a driver of the VF sent a known but unsupported TLV command to the Physical Function, the driver of the PF did not reply. As a consequence, the VF-PF channel was left in an unstable state and the VF eventually timed out. A patch has been applied to correct the VF-PF locking scheme so that unsupported TLVs are properly handled and responded to by the PF side. Also, unsupported TLVs could previously render a mutex used to lock the VF-PF operations. The mutex then stopped protecting critical sections of the code, which could result in error messages being generated when the PF received additional TLVs from the VF. A patch has been applied that corrects the VF-PF channel locking scheme, and unsupported TLVs thus can no longer break the VF-PF lock.
BZ#1040497
A bug in the statistics flow in the bnx2x driver caused the card's DMA Engine (DMAE) to be accessed without taking a necessary lock. As a consequence, previously queued DMAE commands could be overwritten and the Virtual Functions then could timeout on requests to their respective Physical Functions. The likelihood of triggering the bug was higher with more SR-IOV Virtual Functions configured. Overwriting of the DMAE commands could also result in other problems even without using SR-IOV. This update ensures that all flows utilizing DMAE will use the same API and the proper locking scheme is kept by all these flows.
BZ#1035339
When starting or waking up a system that utilized an AHCI controller with empty ports, and the EM transmit bit was busy, the AHCI driver incorrectly released the related error handler before initiation of the sleep operation. As a consequence, the error handler could be acquired by a different port of the AHCI controller and the Serial General Purpose Input/Output (SGPIO) signal could eventually blink the rebuild pattern on an empty port. This update implements cross-port error handler exclusion to the generic ATA driver and the AHCI driver has been modified to use the msleep() function in this particular case. The error handler is no longer released upon the sleep operation and the SGPIO signal can no longer indicate the disk's rebuild on the empty controller's slot.
BZ#1032389
Previous changes to the igb driver caused the ethtool utility to determine and display some capabilities of the Ethernet devices incorrectly. This update fixes the igb driver so that the actual link capabilities are now determined properly, and ethtool displays values as accurate as possible in dependency on the data available to the driver.
All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, several bugs, and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2013-4470, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's TCP/IP protocol suite implementation handled sending of certain UDP packets over sockets that used the UDP_CORK option when the UDP Fragmentation Offload (UFO) feature was enabled on the output device. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to cause a denial of service or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2013-6367, Important
A divide-by-zero flaw was found in the apic_get_tmcct() function in KVM's Local Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (LAPIC) implementation. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host.
CVE-2013-6368, Important
A memory corruption flaw was discovered in the way KVM handled virtual APIC accesses that crossed a page boundary. A local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2013-2141, Low
An information leak flaw in the Linux kernel could allow a local, unprivileged user to leak kernel memory to user space.
Red Hat would like to thank Hannes Frederic Sowa for reporting CVE-2013-4470, and Andrew Honig of Google for reporting CVE-2013-6367 and CVE-2013-6368.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1027343
Due to a regression bug in the mlx4 driver, Mellanox mlx4 adapters could become unresponsive on heavy load along with IOMMU allocation errors being logged to the systems logs. A patch has been applied to the mlx4 driver so that the driver now calculates the last memory page fragment when allocating memory in the Rx path.
BZ#1028278
A bug in the RSXX DMA handling code allowed DISCARD operations to call the pci_unmap_page() function, which triggered a race condition on the PowerPC architecture when DISCARD, READ, and WRITE operations were issued simultaneously. However, DISCARD operations are always assigned a DMA address of 0 because they are never mapped. Therefore, this race could result in freeing memory that was mapped for another operation and a subsequent EEH event. A patch has been applied, preventing the DISCARD operations from calling pci_unmap_page(), and thus avoiding the aforementioned race condition.
BZ#1029330
Due to a missing part of the bcma driver, the brcmsmac kernel module did not have a list of internal aliases that was needed by the kernel to properly handle the related udev events. Consequently, when the bcma driver scanned for the devices at boot time, these udev events were ignored and the kernel did not load the brcmsmac module automatically. A patch that provides missing aliases has been applied so that the udev requests of the brcmsmac module are now handled as expected and the kernel loads the brcmsmac module automatically on boot.
BZ#1029997
A bug in the mlx4 driver could trigger a race between the "blue flame" feature's traffic flow and the stamping mechanism in the Tx ring flow when processing Work Queue Elements (WQEs) in the Tx ring. Consequently, the related queue pair (QP) of the mlx4 Ethernet card entered an error state and the traffic on the related Tx ring was blocked. A patch has been applied to the mlx4 driver so that the driver does not stamp the last completed WQE in the Tx ring, and thus avoids the aforementioned race.
BZ#1030171
A previous change in the NFSv4 code resulted in breaking the sync NFSv4 mount option. A patch has been applied that restores functionality of the sync mount option.
BZ#1030713
Due to a bug in the Emulex lpfc driver, the driver could not allocate a SCSI buffer properly, which resulted in severe performance degradation of lpfc adapters on 64-bit PowerPC systems. A patch addressing this problem has been applied so that lpfc allocates the SCSI buffer correctly and lpfc adapters now work as expected on 64-bit PowerPC systems.
BZ#1032162
When performing I/O operations on a heavily-fragmented GFS2 file system, significant performance degradation could occur. This was caused by the allocation strategy that GFS2 used to search for an ideal contiguous chunk of free blocks in all the available resource groups (rgrp). A series of patches has been applied that improves performance of GFS2 file systems in case of heavy fragmentation. GFS2 now allocates the biggest extent found in the rgrp if it fulfills the minimum requirements. GFS2 has also reduced the amount of bitmap searching in case of multi-block reservations by keeping track of the smallest extent for which the multi-block reservation would fail in the given rgrp. This improves GFS2 performance by avoiding unnecessary rgrp free block searches that would fail. Additionally, this patch series fixes a bug in the GFS2 block allocation code where a multi-block reservation was not properly removed from the rgrp's reservation tree when it was disqualified, which eventually triggered a BUG_ON() macro due to an incorrect count of reserved blocks.
BZ#1032167
An earlier patch to the kernel added the dynamic queue depth throttling functionality to the QLogic's qla2xxx driver that allowed the driver to adjust queue depth for attached SCSI devices. However, the kernel might have crashed when having this functionality enabled in certain environments, such as on systems with EMC PowerPath Multipathing installed that were under heavy I/O load. To resolve this problem, the dynamic queue depth throttling functionality has been removed from the qla2xxx driver.
BZ#1032168
Previously, devices using the ixgbevf driver that were assigned to a virtual machine could not adjust their Jumbo MTU value automatically if the Physical Function (PF) interface was down; when the PF device was brought up, the MTU value on the related Virtual Function (VF) device was set incorrectly. This was caused by the way the communication channel between PF and VF interfaces was set up and the first negotiation attempt between PF and VF was made. To fix this problem, structural changes to the ixgbevf driver have been made so that the kernel can now negotiate the correct API between PF and VF successfully and the MTU value is now set correctly on the VF interface in this situation.
BZ#1032170
A bug in the ixgbe driver caused that IPv6 hardware filtering tables were not correctly rewritten upon interface reset when using a bridge device over the PF interface in an SR-IOV environment. As a result, the IPv6 traffic between VFs was interrupted. An upstream patch has been backported to modify the ixgbe driver so that the update of the Multimedia Terminal Adapter (MTA) table is now unconditional, avoiding possible inconsistencies in the MTA table upon PF's reset. The IPv6 traffic between VFs proceeds as expected in this scenario.
BZ#1032247
When using Haswell HDMI audio controllers with an unaligned DMA buffer size, these audio controllers could become locked up until the next reboot for certain audio stream configurations. A patch has been applied to the Intel's High Definition Audio (HDA) driver that enforces the DMA buffer alignment setting for the Haswell HDMI audio controllers. These audio controllers now work as expected.
BZ#1032249
As a result of a recent fix preventing a deadlock upon an attempt to cover an active XFS log, the behavior of the xfs_log_need_covered() function has changed. However, xfs_log_need_covered() is also called to ensure that the XFS log tail is correctly updated as a part of the XFS journal sync operation. As a consequence, when shutting down an XFS file system, the sync operation failed and some files might have been lost. A patch has been applied to ensure that the tail of the XFS log is updated by logging a dummy record to the XFS journal. The sync operation completes successfully and files are properly written to the disk in this situation.
BZ#1032250
A chunk of a patch was left out when backporting a batch of patches that fixed an infinite loop problem in the LOCK operation with zero state ID during NFSv4 state ID recovery. As a consequence, the system could become unresponsive on numerous occasions. The missing chunk of the patch has been added, resolving this hang issue.
BZ#1032260
When performing buffered WRITE operations from multiple processes to a single file, the NFS code previously always verified whether the lock owner information is identical for the file being accessed even though no file locks were involved. This led to performance degradation because forked child processes had to synchronize dirty data written to a disk by the parent process before writing to a file. Also, when coalescing requests into a single READ or WRITE RPC call, NFS refused the request if the lock owner information did not match for the given file even though no file locks were involved. This also caused performance degradation. A series of patches has been applied that relax relevant test conditions so that lock owner compatibility is no longer verified in the described cases, which resolves these performance issues.
BZ#1032395
Due to a bug in the mlx4 driver, Mellanox Ethernet cards were brought down unexpectedly while adjusting their Tx or Rx ring. A patch has been applied so that the mlx4 driver now properly verifies the state of the Ethernet card when the coalescing of the Tx or Rx ring is being set, which resolves this problem.
BZ#1032423
When the system was under memory stress, a double-free bug in the tg3 driver could have been triggered, resulting in a NIC being brought down unexpectedly followed by a kernel panic. A patch has been applied that restructures the respective code so that the affected ring buffer is freed correctly.
BZ#1032424
The RPC client always retransmitted zero-copy of the page data if it timed out before the first RPC transmission completed. However, such a retransmission could cause data corruption if using the O_DIRECT buffer and the first RPC call completed while the respective TCP socket still held a reference to the pages. To prevent the data corruption, retransmission of the RPC call is, in this situation, performed using the sendmsg() function. The sendmsg() function retransmits an authentic reproduction of the first RPC transmission because the TCP socket holds the full copy of the page data.
BZ#1032688
When creating an XFS file system, an attempt to cover an active XFS log could, under certain circumstances, result in a deadlock between the xfssyncd and xfsbufd daemons. Consequently, several kernel threads became unresponsive and the XFS file system could not have been successfully created, leading to a kernel oops. A patch has been applied to prevent this situation by forcing the active XFS log onto a disk.

Enhancements

BZ#1020518
The kernel now supports memory configurations with more than 1TB of RAM on AMD systems.
BZ#1032426
The kernel has been modified to stop reporting ABS_MISC events on Wacom touch devices in order to ensure that the devices are correctly recognized by the HAL daemon.
All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues and add these enhancements. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.
Updated kernel packages that fix multiple security issues, address several hundred bugs, and add numerous enhancements are now available as part of the ongoing support and maintenance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6. This is the fifth regular update.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system.

Security Fixes

CVE-2013-4387, Important
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel's IPv6 implementation handled certain UDP packets when the UDP Fragmentation Offload (UFO) feature was enabled. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2013-0343, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel handled the creation of temporary IPv6 addresses. If the IPv6 privacy extension was enabled (/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/eth0/use_tempaddr set to '2'), an attacker on the local network could disable IPv6 temporary address generation, leading to a potential information disclosure.
CVE-2013-2888, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel handled HID (Human Interface Device) reports with an out-of-bounds Report ID. An attacker with physical access to the system could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2013-4345, Moderate
An off-by-one flaw was found in the way the ANSI CPRNG implementation in the Linux kernel processed non-block size aligned requests. This could lead to random numbers being generated with less bits of entropy than expected when ANSI CPRNG was used.
CVE-2013-4591, Moderate
It was found that the fix for CVE-2012-2375 released via RHSA-2012:1580 accidentally removed a check for small-sized result buffers. A local, unprivileged user with access to an NFSv4 mount with ACL support could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system .
CVE-2013-4592, Moderate
A flaw was found in the way IOMMU memory mappings were handled when moving memory slots. A malicious user on a KVM host who has the ability to assign a device to a guest could use this flaw to crash the host.
CVE-2013-2889, CVE-2013-2892, Moderate
Heap-based buffer overflow flaws were found in the way the Zeroplus and Pantherlord/GreenAsia game controllers handled HID reports. An attacker with physical access to the system could use these flaws to crash the system or, potentially, escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2012-6542, CVE-2013-3231, Low
Two information leak flaws were found in the logical link control (LLC) implementation in the Linux kernel. A local, unprivileged user could use these flaws to leak kernel stack memory to user space.
CVE-2013-1929, Low
A heap-based buffer overflow in the way the tg3 Ethernet driver parsed the vital product data (VPD) of devices could allow an attacker with physical access to a system to cause a denial of service or, potentially, escalate their privileges.
CVE-2012-6545, CVE-2013-1928, CVE-2013-2164, CVE-2013-2234, Low
Information leak flaws in the Linux kernel could allow a privileged, local user to leak kernel memory to user space.
CVE-2013-2851, Low
A format string flaw was found in the Linux kernel's block layer. A privileged, local user could potentially use this flaw to escalate their privileges to kernel level (ring0).
Red Hat would like to thank Stephan Mueller for reporting CVE-2013-4345, and Kees Cook for reporting CVE-2013-2851.

Bug Fixes

BZ#955712
A function in the RPC code responsible for verifying whether the cached credentials matches the current process did not perform the check correctly. The code checked only whether the groups in the current process credentials appear in the same order as in the cached credential but did not ensure that no other groups are present in the cached credentials. As a consequence, when accessing files in NFS mounts, a process with the same UID and GID as the original process but with a non-matching group list could have been granted an unauthorized access to a file, or under certain circumstances, the process could have been wrongly prevented from accessing the file. The incorrect test condition has been fixed and the problem can no longer occur.
BZ#629857
When the state of the netfilter module was out-of-sync, a TCP connection was recorded in the conntrack table although the TCP connection did not exist between two hosts. If a host re-established this connection with the same source, port, destination port, source address and destination address, the host sent a TCP SYN packet and the peer sent back acknowledgment for this SYN package. However, because netfilter was out-of-sync, netfilter dropped this acknowledgment, and deleted the connection item from the conntrack table, which consequently caused the host to retransmit the SYN packet. A patch has been applied to improve this handling; if an unexpected SYN packet appears, the TCP options are annotated. Acknowledgment for the SYN packet serves as a confirmation of the connection tracking being out-of-sync, then a new connection record is created using the information annotated previously to avoid the retransmission delay.
BZ#955807
Due to several bugs in the ext4 code, data integrity system calls did not always properly persist data on the disk. Therefore, the unsynchronized data in the ext4 file system could have been lost after the system's unexpected termination. A series of patches has been applied to the ext4 code to address this problem, including a fix that ensures proper usage of data barriers in the code responsible for file synchronization. Data loss no longer occurs in the described situation.
BZ#953630
C-states for the Intel Family 6, Model 58 and 62, processors were not properly initialized in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Consequently, these processors were unable to enter deep C-states. Also, C-state accounting was not functioning properly and power management tools, such as powertop or turbostat, thus displayed incorrect C-state transitions. This update applies a patch that ensures proper C-states initialization so the aforementioned processors can now enter deep core power states as expected. Note that this update does not correct C-state accounting which has been addressed by a separate patch.
BZ#953342
The kernel previously did not handle situation where the system needed to fall back from non-flat Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) mode to flat APIC mode. Consequently, a NULL pointer was dereferenced and a kernel panic occurred. This update adds the flat_probe() function to the APIC driver, which allows the kernel using flat APIC mode as a fall-back option. The kernel no longer panics in this situation.
BZ#952785
When attempting to deploy a virtual machine on a hypervisor with multiple NICs and macvtap devices, a kernel panic could occur. This happened because the macvtap driver did not gracefully handle a situation when the macvlan_port.vlans list was empty and returned a NULL pointer. This update applies a series of patches which fix this problem using a read-copy-update (RCU) mechanism and by preventing the driver from returning a NULL pointer if the list is empty. The kernel no longer panics in this scenario.
BZ#952329
Due to a missing structure, the NFSv4 error handler did not handle exceptions caused by revoking NFSv4 delegations. Consequently, the NFSv4 client received the EIO error message instead of the NFS4ERR_ADMIN_REVOKED error. This update modifies the NFSv4 code to no longer require the nfs4_state structure in order to revoke a delegation.
BZ#952174
On KVM guests with the KVM clock (kvmclock) as a clock source and with some VCPUs pinned, certain VCPUs could experience significant sleep delays (elapsed time was greater 20 seconds). This resulted in unexpected delays by sleeping functions and inaccurate measurement for low latency events. The problem happened because a kvmclock update was isolated to a certain VCPU so the NTP frequency correction applied only to that single VCPU. This problem has been resolved by a patch allowing kvmclock updates to all VCPUs on the KVM guest. VCPU sleep time now does not exceed the expected amount and no longer causes the aforementioned problems.
BZ#951937
When using applications that intensively utilized memory mapping, customers experienced significant application latency, which led to serious performance degradation. A series of patches has been applied to fix the problem. Among other, the patches modifies the memory mapping code to allow block devices to require stable page writes, enforce stable page writes only if required by a backing device, and optionally snapshot page content to provide stable pages during write. As a result, application latency has been improved by a considerable amount and applications with high demand of memory mapping now perform as expected.
BZ#997845
The RAID1 and RAD10 code previously called the raise_barrier() and lower_barrier() functions instead of the freeze_array() and unfreeze_array() functions that are safe being called from within the management thread. As a consequence, a deadlock situation could occur if an MD array contained a spare disk, rendering the respective kernel thread unresponsive. Furthermore, if a shutdown sequence was initiated after this problem had occurred, the shutdown sequence became unresponsive and any in-cache file system data that were not synchronized to the disk were lost. A patch correcting this problem has been applied and the RAID1 and RAID10 code now uses management-thread safe functions as expected.
BZ#996802
Previous changes to the Linux kernel network driver code introduced the TCP Small Queues (TSQ) feature. However, these changes led to performance degradation on certain network devices, such as devices using the ixgbe driver. This problem has been fixed by a series of patches to the TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) and TSQ features that include support for setting the size of TSO frames, and dynamic limit for the number of packet queues on device queues for a given TCP flow.
BZ#950598
If an NFSv4 client was checking open permissions for a delegated OPEN operation during OPEN state recovery of an NFSv4 server, the NFSv4 state manager could enter a deadlock. This happened because the client was holding the NFSv4 sequence ID of the OPEN operation. This problem is resolved by releasing the sequence ID before the client starts checking open permissions.
BZ#983288
NFS previously allowed extending an NFS file write to cover a full page only if the file had not set a byte-range lock. However, extending the write to cover the entire page is sometimes desirable in order to avoid fragmentation inefficiencies. For example, a noticeable performance decrease was reported if a series of small non-contiguous writes was performed on the file. A patch has been applied to the NFS code that allows NFS extending a file write to a full page write if the whole file is locked for writing or if the client holds a write delegation.
BZ#998752
A patch included in kernel version 2.6.32-358.9.1.el6, to fix handling of revoked NFSv4 delegations, introduced a regression bug to the NFSv4 code. This regression in the NFSv4 exception and asynchronous error handling allowed, under certain circumstances, passing a NULL inode to an NFSv4 delegation-related function, which resulted in a kernel panic. The NFSv4 exception and asynchronous error handling has been fixed so that a NULL inode can no longer be passed in this situation.
BZ#947582
XFS file systems were occasionally shut down with the "xfs_trans_ail_delete_bulk: attempting to delete a log item that is not in the AIL" error message. This happened because the EFI/EFD handling logic was incorrect and the EFI log item could have been freed before it was placed in the AIL and committed. A patch has been applied to the XFS code fixing the EFI/EFD handling logic and ensuring that the EFI log items are never freed before the EFD log items are processed. The aforementioned error no longer occurs on an XFS shutdown.
BZ#947275
A bug in the autofs4 mount expiration code could cause the autofs4 module to falsely report a busy tree of NFS mounts as "not in use". Consequently, automount attempted to unmount the tree and failed with a "failed to umount offset" error, leaving the mount tree to appear as empty directories. A patch has been applied to remove an incorrectly used autofs dentry mount check and the aforementioned problem no longer occurs.
BZ#927988
Cyclic adding and removing of the st kernel module could previously cause a system to become unresponsive. This was caused by a disk queue reference count bug in the SCSI tape driver. An upstream patch addressing this bug has been backported to the SCSI tape driver and the system now responds as expected in this situation.
BZ#927918
A previous update introduced a new failure mode to the blk_get_request() function returning the -ENODEV error code when a block device queue is being destroyed. However, the change did not include a NULL pointer check for all callers of the function. Consequently, the kernel could dereference a NULL pointer when removing a block device from the system, which resulted in a kernel panic. This update applies a patch that adds these missing NULL pointer checks. Also, some callers of the blk_get_request() function could previously return the -ENOMEM error code instead of -ENODEV, which would lead to incorrect call chain propagation. This update applies a patch ensuring that correct return codes are propagated.
BZ#790921
By default, the kernel uses a best-fit algorithm for allocating Virtual Memory Areas (VMAs) to map processed files to the address space. However, if an enormous number of small files (hundreds of thousands or millions) was being mapped, the address space became extremely fragmented, which resulted in significant CPU usage and performance degradation. This update introduces an optional next-fit policy which, if enabled, allows for mapping of a file to the first suitable unused area in the address space that follows after the previously allocated VMA.
BZ#960717
A rare race condition between the "devloss" timeout and discovery state machine could trigger a bug in the lpfc driver that nested two levels of spin locks in reverse order. The reverse order of spin locks led to a deadlock situation and the system became unresponsive. With this update, a patch addressing the deadlock problem has been applied and the system no longer hangs in this situation.
BZ#922999
An error in backporting the block reservation feature from upstream resulted in a missing allocation of a reservation structure when an allocation is required during the rename system call. Renaming a file system object (for example, file or directory) requires a block allocation for the destination directory. If the destination directory had not had a reservation structure allocated, a NULL pointer dereference occurred, leading to a kernel panic. With this update, a reservation structure is allocated before the rename operation, and a kernel panic no longer occurs in this scenario.
BZ#805407
A system could become unresponsive due to an attempt to shut down an XFS file system that was waiting for log I/O completion. A patch to the XFS code has been applied that allows for the shutdown method to be called from different contexts so XFS log items can be deleted properly even outside the AIL, which fixes this problem.
BZ#922931
A bug in the dm_btree_remove() function could cause leaf values to have incorrect reference counts. Removal of a shared block could result in space maps considering the block as no longer used. As a consequence, sending a discard request to a shared region of a thin device could corrupt its snapshot. The bug has been fixed to prevent corruption in this scenario.
BZ#980273
A recent change in the memory mapping code introduced a new optional next-fit algorithm for allocating VMAs to map processed files to the address space. This change, however, broke behavior of a certain internal function which then always followed the next-fit VMA allocation scheme instead of the first-fit VMA allocation scheme. Consequently, when the first-fit VMA allocation scheme was in use, this bug caused linear address space fragmentation and could lead to early "-ENOMEM" failures for mmap() requests. This patch restores the original first-fit behavior to the function so the aforementioned problems no longer occur.
BZ#922779
The GFS2 discard code did not calculate the sector offset correctly for block devices with the sector size of 4 KB, which led to loss of data and metadata on these devices. A patch correcting this problem has been applied so the discard and FITRIM requests now work as expected for the block devices with the 4 KB sector size.
BZ#1002765
A bug in the real-time (RT) scheduler could cause a RT priority process to stop running due to an invalid attribute of the run queue. When a CPU became affected by this bug, the migration kernel thread stopped running on the CPU, and subsequently every other process that was migrated to the affected CPU by the system stopped running as well. A patch has been applied to the RT scheduler and RT priority processes are no longer affected this problem.
BZ#920794
When using the congestion window lock functionality of the ip utility, the system could become unresponsive. This happened because the tcp_slow_start() function could enter an infinite loop if the congestion window was locked using route metrics. A set of patches has been applied to comply with the upstream kernel, ensuring the problem no longer occurs in this scenario.
BZ#978609
A race condition in the abort task and SPP device task management path of the isci driver could, under certain circumstances, cause the driver to fail cleaning up timed-out I/O requests that were pending on an SAS disk device. As a consequence, the kernel removed such a device from the system. A patch applied to the isci driver fixes this problem by sending the task management function request to the SAS drive anytime the abort function is entered and the task has not completed. The driver now cleans up timed-out I/O requests as expected in this situation.
BZ#920672
Due to a race condition in the kernel's DMA initialization code, DMA requests from the hpsa and hpilo drivers could fail with IO_PAGE_FAULT errors during initialization of the AMD iommu driver on AMD systems with the IOMMU feature enabled. To avoid triggering this race condition, the kernel now executes the init_device_table_dma() function to block DMA requests from all devices only after the initialization of unity mappings is finished.
BZ#1003697
If the arp_interval and arp_validate bonding options were not enabled on the configured bond device in the correct order, the bond device did not process ARP replies, which led to link failures and changes of the active slave device. A series of patches has been applied to modify an internal bond ARP hook based on the values of arp_validate and arp_interval. Therefore, the ARP hook is registered even if arp_interval is set after arp_validate has already been enabled, and ARP replies are processed as expected.
BZ#920445
The kernel could rarely terminate instead of creating a dump file when a multi-threaded process using FPU aborted. This happened because the kernel did not wait until all threads became inactive and attempted to dump the FPU state of active threads into memory which triggered a BUG_ON() routine. A patch addressing this problem has been applied and the kernel now waits for the threads to become inactive before dumping their FPU state into memory.
BZ#962460
Previously, the Generic Receive Offload (GRO) functionality was not enabled by default for VLAN devices. Consequently, certain network adapters, such as Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (VFA) II, that use be2net driver, were dropping packets when VLAN tagging was enabled and the 8021q kernel module loaded. This update applies a patch that enables GRO by default for VLAN devices.
BZ#827548
A race condition between the read_swap_cache_async() and get_swap_page() functions in the Memory management (mm) code could lead to a deadlock situation. The deadlock could occur only on systems that deployed swap partitions on devices supporting block DISCARD and TRIM operations if kernel preemption was disabled (the !CONFIG_PREEMPT parameter). If the read_swap_cache_async() function was given a SWAP_HAS_CACHE entry that did not have a page in the swap cache yet, a DISCARD operation was performed in the scan_swap_map() function. Consequently, completion of an I/O operation was scheduled on the same CPU's working queue the read_swap_cache_async() was running on. This caused the thread in read_swap_cache_async() to loop indefinitely around its "-EEXIST" case, rendering the system unresponsive. The problem has been fixed by adding an explicit cond_resched() call to read_swap_cache_async(), which allows other tasks to run on the affected CPU, and thus avoiding the deadlock.
BZ#987426
An infinite loop bug in the NFSv4 code caused an NFSv4 mount process to hang on a busy loop of the LOOKUP_ROOT operation when attempting to mount an NFSv4 file system and the first iteration on this operation failed. A patch has been applied that allows to exit the LOOKUP_ROOT operation properly and a mount attempt now either succeeds or fails in this situation.
BZ#828936
A bug in the OProfile tool led to a NULL pointer dereference while unloading the OProfile kernel module, which resulted in a kernel panic. The problem was triggered if the kernel was running with the nolapic parameter set and OProfile was configured to use the NMI timer interrupt. The problem has been fixed by correctly setting the NMI timer when initializing OProfile.
BZ#976915
An NFS client previously did not wait for completing of unfinished I/O operations before sending the LOCKU and RELEASE_LOCKOWNER operations to the NFS server in order to release byte range locks on files. Consequently, if the server processed the LOCKU and RELEASE_LOCKOWNER operations before some of the related READ operations, it released all locking states associated with the requested lock owner, and the READs returned the NFS4ERR_BAD_STATEID error code. This resulted in the "Lock reclaim failed!" error messages being generated in the system log and the NFS client had to recover from the error. A series of patches has been applied ensuring that an NFS client waits for all outstanding I/O operations to complete before releasing the locks.
BZ#918239
When the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel runs as a virtual machine, it performs boot-time detection of the hypervisor in order to enable hypervisor-specific optimizations. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 introduces detection and optimization for the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. Previously Hyper-V was detected first, however, because some Xen hypervisors can attempt to emulate Hyper-V, this could lead to a boot failure when that emulation was not exact. A patch has been applied to ensure that the attempt to detect Xen is always done before Hyper-V, resolving this issue.
BZ#962976
If the audit queue is too long, the kernel schedules the kauditd daemon to alleviate the load on the audit queue. Previously, if the current audit process had any pending signals in such a situation, it entered a busy-wait loop for the duration of an audit backlog timeout because the wait_for_auditd() function was called as an interruptible task. This could lead to system lockup in non-preemptive uniprocessor systems. This update fixes the problem by setting wait_for_auditd() as uninterruptible.
BZ#833299
Due to a bug in firmware, systems using the LSI MegaRAID controller failed to initialize this device in the kdump kernel if the "intel_iommu=on" and "iommu=pt"kernel parameters were specified in the first kernel. As a workaround until a firmware fix is available, a patch to the megaraid_sas driver has been applied so if the firmware is not in the ready state upon the first attempt to initialize the controller, the driver resets the controller and retries for firmware transition to the ready state.
BZ#917872
A previous change in the port auto-selection code allowed sharing ports with no conflicts extending its usage. Consequently, when binding a socket with the SO_REUSEADDR socket option enabled, the bind(2) function could allocate an ephemeral port that was already used. A subsequent connection attempt failed in such a case with the EADDRNOTAVAIL error code. This update applies a patch that modifies the port auto-selection code so that bind(2) now selects a non-conflict port even with the SO_REUSEADDR option enabled.
BZ#994430
A previous patch to the bridge multicast code introduced a bug allowing reinitialization of an active timer for a multicast group whenever an IPv6 multicast query was received. A patch has been applied to the bridge multicast code so that a bridge multicast timer is no longer reinitialized when it is active.
BZ#916994
A kernel panic could occur during path failover on systems using multiple iSCSI, FC or SRP paths to connect an iSCSI initiator and an iSCSI target. This happened because a race condition in the SCSI driver allowed removing a SCSI device from the system before processing its run queue, which led to a NULL pointer dereference. The SCSI driver has been modified and the race is now avoided by holding a reference to a SCSI device run queue while it is active.
BZ#994382
The kernel's md driver contained multiple bugs, including a use-after-free bug in the raid10 code that could cause a kernel panic. Also a data corruption bug in the raid5 code was discovered. The bug occurred when a hard drive was replaced while a RAID4, RAID5, or RAID6 array contained by the drive was in process of recovery. A series of patches has been applied to fix all bugs that have been discovered. The md driver now contains necessary tests that prevent the mentioned use-after-free and data corruption bugs from occurring.
BZ#840860
The sunrpc code paths that wake up an RPC task are highly optimized for speed so the code avoids using any locking mechanism but requires precise operation ordering. Multiple bugs were found related to operation ordering, which resulted in a kernel crash involving either a BUG_ON() assertion or an incorrect use of a data structure in the sunrpc layer. These problems have been fixed by properly ordering operations related to the RPC_TASK_QUEUED and RPC_TASK_RUNNING bits in the wake-up code paths of the sunrpc layer.
BZ#916735
In the RPC code, when a network socket backed up due to high network traffic, a timer was set causing a retransmission, which in turn could cause even larger amount of network traffic to be generated. To prevent this problem, the RPC code now waits for the socket to empty instead of setting the timer.
BZ#916726
When using parallel NFS (pNFS), a kernel panic could occur when a process was killed while getting the file layout information during the open() system call. A patch has been applied to prevent this problem from occurring in this scenario.
BZ#916722
Previously, when open(2) system calls were processed, the GETATTR routine did not check to see if valid attributes were also returned. As a result, the open() call succeeded with invalid attributes instead of failing in such a case. This update adds the missing check, and the open() call succeeds only when valid attributes are returned.
BZ#916361
The crypto_larval_lookup() function could return a larval, an in-between state when a cryptographic algorithm is being registered, even if it did not create one. This could cause a larval to be terminated twice, and result in a kernel panic. This occurred for example when the NFS service was run in FIPS mode, and attempted to use the MD5 hashing algorithm even though FIPS mode has this algorithm blacklisted. A condition has been added to the crypto_larval_lookup() function to check whether a larval was created before returning it.
BZ#976879
Previously, systems running heavily-loaded NFS servers could experience poor performance of the NFS READDIR operations on large directories that were undergoing concurrent modifications, especially over higher latency connections. This happened because the NFS code performed certain dentry operations inefficiently and revalidated directory attributes too often. This update applies a series of patches that address the problem as follows; needed dentries can be accessed from dcache after the READDIR operation, and directory attributes are revalidated only at the beginning of the directory or if the cached attributes expire.
BZ#976823
The GFS2 did not reserve journal space for a quota change block while growing the size of a file. Consequently, a fatal assertion causing a withdraw of the GFS2 file system could have been triggered when the free blocks were allocated from the secondary bitmap. With this update, GFS2 reserves additional blocks in the journal for the quota change so the file growing transaction can now complete successfully in this situation.
BZ#976535
A previous patch to the CIFS code caused a regression of a problem where under certain conditions, a mount attempt of a CIFS DFS share fails with a "mount error(6): No such device or address" error message. This happened because the return code variable was not properly reset after a previous unsuccessful mount attempt. A backported patch has been applied to properly reset the variable and CIFS DFS shares can now be mounted as expected.
BZ#965002
A bug in the PCI driver allowed to use a pointer to the Virtual Function (VF) device entry that was already freed. Consequently, when hot-removing an I/O unit with enabled SR-IOV devices, a kernel panic occurred. This update modifies the PCI driver so a valid pointer to the Physical Function (PF) device entry is used and the kernel no longer panics in this situation.
BZ#915834
A race condition could occur in the uhci-hcd kernel module if the IRQ line was shared with other devices. The race condition allowed the IRQ handler routine to be called before the data structures were fully initialized, which caused the system to become unresponsive. This update applies a patch that fixes the problem by adding a test condition to the IRQ handler routine; if the data structure initialization is still in progress, the handler routine finishes immediately.
BZ#975507
An insufficiently designed calculation in the CPU accelerator could cause an arithmetic overflow in the set_cyc2ns_scale() function if the system uptime exceeded 208 days prior to using kexec to boot into a new kernel. This overflow led to a kernel panic on the systems using the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) clock source, primarily the systems using Intel Xeon E5 processors that do not reset TSC on soft power cycles. A patch has been applied to modify the calculation so that this arithmetic overflow and kernel panic can no longer occur under these circumstances.
BZ#915479
Due to a bug in the NFSv4 nfsd code, a NULL pointer could have been dereferenced when nfsd was looking up a path to the NFSv4 recovery directory for the fsync operation, which resulted in a kernel panic. This update applies a patch that modifies the NFSv4 nfsd code to open a file descriptor for fsync in the NFSv4 recovery directory instead of looking up the path. The kernel no longer panics in this situation.
BZ#858198
Previously, bond and bridge devices did not pass Generic Receive Offload (GRO) information to their slave devices, and bridge devices also did not propagate VLAN information to their ports. As a consequence, in environments with VLAN configured over a bridge or bonding device, performance of the slave devices configured on the bridge and bonding devices was significantly low. A series of patches has been applied that adds the GRO feature for bonding and bridge devices and allows VLANs to be registered with the participating bridge ports. If a slave device supports GRO, its performance is now significantly increased in environments with VLAN configured over a bridge or bonding device.
BZ#975211
Due to a bug in the NFS code, kernel size-192 and size-256 slab caches could leak memory. This could eventually result in an OOM issue when the most of available memory was used by the respective slab cache. A patch has been applied to fix this problem and the respective attributes in the NFS code are now freed properly.
BZ#913704
Previously, the NFS Lock Manager (NLM) did not resend blocking lock requests after NFSv3 server reboot recovery. As a consequence, when an application was running on a NFSv3 mount and requested a blocking lock, the application received an -ENOLCK error. This patch ensures that NLM always resend blocking lock requests after the grace period has expired.
BZ#862758
When counting CPU time, the utime and stime values are scaled based on rtime. Prior to this update, the utime value was multiplied with the rtime value, but the integer multiplication overflow could happen, and the resulting value could be then truncated to 64 bits. As a consequence, utime values visible in the user space were stall even if an application consumed a lot of CPU time. With this update, the multiplication is performed on stime instead of utime. This significantly reduces the chances of an overflow on most workloads because the stime value, unlike the utime value, cannot grow fast.
BZ#913660
In a case of a broken or malicious server, an index node (inode) of an incorrect type could be matched. This led to an NFS client NULL pointer dereference, and, consequently, to a kernel oops. To prevent this problem from occurring in this scenario, a check has been added to verify that the inode type is correct.
BZ#913645
A previously-applied patch introduced a bug in the ipoib_cm_destroy_tx() function, which allowed a CM object to be moved between lists without any supported locking. Under a heavy system load, this could cause the system to crash. With this update, proper locking of the CM objects has been re-introduced to fix the race condition, and the system no longer crashes under a heavy load.
BZ#966853
Previously, when booting a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 system and the ACPI Static Resource Affinity Table (SRAT) had a hot-pluggable bit enabled, the kernel considered the SRAT table incorrect and NUMA was not configured. This led to a general protection fault and a kernel panic occurring on the system. The problem has been fixed by using an SMBIOS check in the code in order to avoid the SRAT code table consistency checks. NUMA is now configured as expected and the kernel no longer panics in this situation.
BZ#912963
When booting the normal kernel on certain servers, such as HP ProLiant DL980 G7, some interrupts may have been lost which resulted in the system bein unresponsive or rarely even in data loss. This happened because the kernel did not set correct destination mode during the boot; the kernel booted in "logical cluster mode" that is default while this system supported only "x2apic physical mode". This update applies a series of patches addressing the problem. The underlying APIC code has been modified so the x2apic probing code now checks the Fixed ACPI Description Table (FADT) and installs the x2apic "physical" driver as expected. Also, the APIC code has been simplified and the code now uses probe routines to select destination APIC mode and install the correct APIC drivers.
BZ#912867
Previously, the fsync(2) system call incorrectly returned the EIO (Input/Output) error instead of the ENOSPC (No space left on device) error. This was due to incorrect error handling in the page cache. This problem has been fixed and the correct error value is now returned.
BZ#912842
Previously, an NFS RPC task could enter a deadlock and become unresponsive if it was waiting for an NFSv4 state serialization lock to become available and the session slot was held by the NFSv4 server. This update fixes this problem along with the possible race condition in the pNFS return-on-close code. The NFSv4 client has also been modified to not accepting delegated OPEN operations if a delegation recall is in effect. The client now also reports NFSv4 servers that try to return a delegation when the client is using the CLAIM_DELEGATE_CUR open mode.
BZ#912662
Due to the way the CPU time was calculated, an integer multiplication overflow bug could occur after several days of running CPU bound processes that were using hundreds of kernel threads. As a consequence, the kernel stopped updating the CPU time and provided an incorrect CPU time instead. This could confuse users and lead to various application problems. This update applies a patch fixing this problem by decreasing the precision of calculations when the stime and rtime values become too large. Also, a bug allowing stime values to be sometimes erroneously calculated as utime values has been fixed.
BZ#967095
An NFS server could terminate unexpectedly due to a NULL pointer dereference caused by a rare race condition in the lockd daemon. An applied patch fixes this problem by protecting the relevant code with spin locks, and thus avoiding the race in lockd.
BZ#911359
Virtual LAN (VLAN) support of the eHEA ethernet adapter did not work as expected. A "device ethX has buggy VLAN hw accel" message could have been reported when running the "dmesg" command. This was because an upstream backport patch removed the vlan_rx_register() function. This update adds the function back, and eHEA VLAN support works as expected. This update also addresses a possible kernel panic, which could occur due to a NULL pointer dereference when processing received VLAN packets. The patch adds a test condition verifying whether a VLAN group is set by the network stack, which prevents a possible NULL pointer to be dereferenced, and the kernel no longer crashes in this situation.
BZ#910597
The kernel's implementation of RTAS (RunTime Abstraction Services) previously allowed the stop_topology_update() function to be called from an interrupt context during live partition migration on PowerPC and IBM System p machines. As a consequence, the system became unresponsive. This update fixes the problem by calling stop_topology_update() earlier in the migration process, and the system no longer hangs in this situation.
BZ#875753
Truncating files on a GFS2 file system could fail with an "unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference" error. This was because of a missing reservation structure that caused the truncate code to reference an incorrect pointer. To prevent this, a patch has been applied to allocate a block reservation structure before truncating a file.
BZ#909464
Previously, race conditions could sometimes occur in interrupt handling on the Emulex BladeEngine 2 (BE2) controllers, causing the network adapter to become unresponsive. This update provides a series of patches for the be2net driver, which prevents the race from occurring. The network cards using BE2 chipsets no longer hang due to incorrectly handled interrupt events.
BZ#908990
Previously, power-limit notification interrupts were enabled by default on the system. This could lead to degradation of system performance or even render the system unusable on certain platforms, such as Dell PowerEdge servers. A patch has been applied to disable power-limit notification interrupts by default and a new kernel command line parameter "int_pln_enable" has been added to allow users observing these events using the existing system counters. Power-limit notification messages are also no longer displayed on the console. The affected platforms no longer suffer from degraded system performance due to this problem.
BZ#876778
A change in the ipmi_si driver handling caused an extensively long delay while booting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 on SIG UV platforms. The driver was loaded as a kernel module on previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 while it is now built within the kernel. However, SIG UV does not use, and thus does not support the ipmi_si driver. A patch has been applied and the kernel now does not initialize the ipmi_si driver when booting on SIG UV.
BZ#908851
Previously, the queue limits were not being retained as they should have been if a device did not contain any data or if a multipath device temporarily lost all its paths. This problem has been fixed by avoiding a call to the dm_calculate_queue_limits() function.
BZ#908751
When adding a virtual PCI device, such as virtio disk, virtio net, e1000 or rtl8139, to a KVM guest, the kacpid thread reprograms the hot plug parameters of all devices on the PCI bus to which the new device is being added. When reprogramming the hot plug parameters of a VGA or QXL graphics device, the graphics device emulation requests flushing of the guest's shadow page tables. Previously, if the guest had a huge and complex set of shadow page tables, the flushing operation took a significant amount of time and the guest could appear to be unresponsive for several minutes. This resulted in exceeding the threshold of the "soft lockup" watchdog and the "BUG: soft lockup" events were logged by both, the guest and host kernel. This update applies a series of patches that deal with this problem. The KVM's Memory Management Unit (MMU) now avoids creating multiple page table roots in connection with processors that support Extended Page Tables (EPT). This prevents the guest's shadow page tables from becoming too complex on machines with EPT support. MMU now also flushes only large memory mappings, which alleviates the situation on machines where the processor does not support EPT. Additionally, a free memory accounting race that could prevent KVM MMU from freeing memory pages has been fixed.
BZ#908608
Certain CPUs contain on-chip virtual-machine control structure (VMCS) caches that are used to keep active VMCSs managed by the KVM module. These VMCSs contain runtime information of the guest machines operated by KVM. These CPUs require support of the VMCLEAR instruction that allows flushing the cache's content into memory. The kernel previously did not use the VMCLEAR instruction in Kdump. As a consequence, when dumping a core of the QEMU KVM host, the respective CPUs did not flush VMCSs to the memory and the guests' runtime information was not included in the core dump. This problem has been addressed by a series of patches that implement support of using the VMCLEAR instruction in Kdump. The kernel is now performs the VMCLEAR operation in Kdump if it is required by a CPU so the vmcore file of the QEMU KVM host contains all VMCSs information as expected.
BZ#908524
When pNFS (parallel NFS) code was in use, a file locking process could enter a deadlock while trying to recover form a server reboot. This update introduces a new locking mechanism that avoids the deadlock situation in this scenario.
BZ#878708
Sometimes, the irqbalance tool could not get the CPU NUMA node information because of missing symlinks for CPU devices in sysfs. This update adds the NUMA node symlinks for CPU devices in sysfs, which is also useful when using irqbalance to build a CPU topology.
BZ#908158
The virtual file system (VFS) code had a race condition between the unlink and link system calls that allowed creating hard links to deleted (unlinked) files. This could, under certain circumstances, cause inode corruption that eventually resulted in a file system shutdown. The problem was observed in Red Hat Storage during rsync operations on replicated Gluster volumes that resulted in an XFS shutdown. A testing condition has been added to the VFS code, preventing hard links to deleted files from being created.
BZ#908093
When an inconsistency is detected in a GFS2 file system after an I/O operation, the kernel performs the withdraw operation on the local node. However, the kernel previously did not wait for an acknowledgement from the GFS control daemon (gfs_controld) before proceeding with the withdraw operation. Therefore, if a failure isolating the GFS2 file system from a data storage occurred, the kernel was not aware of this problem and an I/O operation to the shared block device may have been performed after the withdraw operation was logged as successful. This could lead to corruption of the file system or prevent the node from journal recovery. This patch modifies the GFS2 code so the withdraw operation no longer proceeds without the acknowledgement from gfs_controld, and the GFS2 file system can no longer become corrupted after performing the withdraw operation.
BZ#907844
If a logical volume was created on devices with thin provisioning enabled, the mkfs.ext4 command took a long time to complete, and the following message was recorded in the system log:
kernel: blk: request botched
This was caused by discard request merging that was not completely functional in the block and SCSI layers. This functionality has been temporarily disabled to prevent such problems from occurring.
BZ#907512
A previous patch that modified dcache and autofs code caused a regression. Due to this regression, unmounting a large number of expired automounts on a system under heavy NFS load caused soft lockups, rendering the system unresponsive. If a "soft lockup" watchdog was configured, the machine rebooted. To fix the regression, the erroneous patch has been reverted and the system now handle the aforementioned scenario properly without any soft lockups.
BZ#907227
Previously, when using parallel network file system (pNFS) and data was written to the appropriate storage device, the LAYOUTCOMMIT requests being sent to the metadata server could fail internally. The metadata server was not provided with the modified layout based on the written data, and these changes were not visible to the NFS client. This happened because the encoding functions for the LAYOUTCOMMIT and LAYOUTRETURN operations were defined as void, and returned thus an arbitrary status. This update corrects these encoding functions to return 0 on success as expected. The changes on the storage device are now propagated to the metadata server and can be observed as expected.
BZ#883905
When the Active Item List (AIL) becomes empty, the xfsaild daemon is moved to a task sleep state that depends on the timeout value returned by the xfsaild_push() function. The latest changes modified xfsaild_push() to return a 10-ms value when the AIL is empty, which sets xfsaild into the uninterruptible sleep state (D state) and artificially increased system load average. This update applies a patch that fixes this problem by setting the timeout value to the allowed maximum, 50 ms. This moves xfsaild to the interruptible sleep state (S state), avoiding the impact on load average.
BZ#905126
Previously, init scripts were unable to set the master interface MAC address properly because it was overwritten by the first slave MAC address. To avoid this problem, this update re-introduces the check for an unassigned MAC address before adopting the first slaves as its own.
BZ#884442
Due to a bug in the be2net driver, events in the RX, TX, and MCC queues were not acknowledged before closing the respective queue. This could cause unpredictable behavior when creating RX rings during the subsequent queue opening. This update applies a patch that corrects this problem and events are now acknowledged as expected in this scenario.
BZ#904726
Previously, the mlx4 driver set the number of requested MSI-X vectors to 2 under multi-function mode on mlx4 cards. However, the default setting of the mlx4 firmware allows for a higher number of requested MSI-X vectors (4 of them with the current firmware). This update modifies the mlx4 driver so that it uses these default firmware settings, which improves performance of mlx4 cards.
BZ#904025
Reading a large number of files from a pNFS (parallel NFS) mount and canceling the running operation by pressing Ctrl+C caused a general protection fault in the XDR code, which could manifest itself as a kernel oops with an "unable to handle kernel paging request" message. This happened because decoding of the LAYOUTGET operation is done by a worker thread and the caller waits for the worker thread to complete. When the reading operation was canceled, the caller stopped waiting and freed the pages. So the pages no longer existed at the time the worker thread called the relevant function in the XDR code. The cleanup process of these pages has been moved to a different place in the code, which prevents the kernel oops from happening in this scenario.
BZ#903644
A previous patch to the mlx4 driver enabled an internal loopback to allow communication between functions on the same host. However, this change introduced a regression that caused virtual switch (vSwitch) bridge devices using Mellanox Ethernet adapter as the uplink to become inoperative in native (non-SRIOV) mode under certain circumstances. To fix this problem, the destination MAC address is written to Tx descriptors of transmitted packets only in SRIOV or eSwitch mode, or during the device self-test. Uplink traffic works as expected in the described setup.
BZ#887006
The Intel 5520 and 5500 chipsets do not properly handle remapping of MSI and MSI-X interrupts. If the interrupt remapping feature is enabled on the system with such a chipset, various problems and service disruption could occur (for example, a NIC could stop receiving frames), and the "kernel: do_IRQ: 7.71 No irq handler for vector (irq -1)" error message appears in the system logs. As a workaround to this problem, it has been recommended to disable the interrupt remapping feature in the BIOS on such systems, and many vendors have updated their BIOS to disable interrupt remapping by default. However, the problem is still being reported by users without proper BIOS level with this feature properly turned off. Therefore, this update modifies the kernel to check if the interrupt remapping feature is enabled on these systems and to provide users with a warning message advising them on turning off the feature and updating the BIOS.
BZ#887045
When booting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 system that utilized a large number of CPUs (more than 512), the system could fail to boot or could appear to be unresponsive after initialization. This happened because the CPU frequency driver used a regular spin lock (cpufreq_driver_lock) to serialize frequency transitions, and this lock could, under certain circumstances, become a source of heavy contention during the system initialization and operation. A patch has been applied to convert cpufreq_driver_lock into a read-write lock, which resolves the contention problem. All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems now boot and operate as expected.
BZ#903220
A previous patch to the kernel introduced a bug by assigning a different value to the IFLA_EXT_MASK Netlink attribute than found in the upstream kernels. This could have caused various problems; for example, a binary compiled against upstream headers could have failed or behaved unexpectedly on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and later kernels. This update realigns IFLA_EXT_MASK in the enumeration correctly by synchronizing the IFLA_* enumeration with the upstream. This ensures that binaries compiled against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 kernel headers will function as expected. Backwards compatibility is guaranteed.
BZ#887868
Due to a bug in the SCTP code, a NULL pointer dereference could occur when freeing an SCTP association that was hashed, resulting in a kernel panic. A patch addresses this problem by trying to unhash SCTP associations before freeing them and the problem no longer occurs.
BZ#888417
Previously, a kernel panic could occur on machines using the SCSI sd driver with Data Integrity Field (DIF) type 2 protection. This was because the scsi_register_driver() function registered the prep_fn()function that might have needed to use the sd_cdp_pool variable for the DIF functionality. However, the variable had not yet been initialized at this point. The underlying code has been updated so that the driver is registered last, which prevents a kernel panic from occurring in this scenario.
BZ#901747
The bnx2x driver could have previously reported an occasional MDC/MDIO timeout error along with the loss of the link connection. This could happen in environments using an older boot code because the MDIO clock was set in the beginning of each boot code sequence instead of per CL45 command. To avoid this problem, the bnx2x driver now sets the MDIO clock per CL45 command. Additionally, the MDIO clock is now implemented per EMAC register instead of per port number, which prevents ports from using different EMAC addresses for different PHY accesses. Also, boot code or Management Firmware (MFW) upgrade is required to prevent the boot code (firmware) from taking over link ownership if the driver's pulse is delayed. The BCM57711 card requires boot code version 6.2.24 or later, and the BCM57712/578xx cards require MFW version 7.4.22 or later.
BZ#990806
When the Audit subsystem was under heavy load, it could loop infinitely in the audit_log_start() function instead of failing over to the error recovery code. This would cause soft lockups in the kernel. With this update, the timeout condition in the audit_log_start() function has been modified to properly fail over when necessary.
BZ#901701
A previous kernel update broke queue pair (qp) hash list deletion in the qp_remove() function. This could cause a general protection fault in the InfiniBand stack or QLogic InfiniBand driver. A patch has been applied to restore the former behavior so the general protection fault no longer occurs.
BZ#896233
Under rare circumstances, if a TCP retransmission was multiple times partially acknowledged and collapsed, the used Socked Buffer (SKB) could become corrupted due to an overflow caused by the transmission headroom. This resulted in a kernel panic. The problem was observed rarely when using an IP-over-InfiniBand (IPoIB) connection. This update applies a patch that verifies whether a transmission headroom exceeded the maximum size of the used SKB, and if so, the headroom is reallocated. It was also discovered that a TCP stack could retransmit misaligned SKBs if a malicious peer acknowledged sub MSS frame and output interface did not have a sequence generator (SG) enabled. This update introduces a new function that allows for copying of a SKB with a new head so the SKB remains aligned in this situation.
BZ#896020
When using transparent proxy (TProxy) over IPv6, the kernel previously created neighbor entries for local interfaces and peers that were not reachable directly. This update corrects this problem and the kernel no longer creates invalid neighbor entries.
BZ#894683
A previous change in the port auto-selection code allowed sharing ports with no conflicts extending its usage. Consequently, when binding a socket with the SO_REUSEADDR socket option enabled, the bind(2) function could allocate an ephemeral port that was already used. A subsequent connection attempt failed in such a case with the EADDRNOTAVAIL error code. This update applies a patch that modifies the port auto-selection code so that bind(2) now selects a non-conflict port even with the SO_REUSEADDR option enabled.
BZ#893584
Timeouts could occur on an NFS client with heavy read workloads; for example when using rsync and ldconfig. Both client-side and server-side causes were found for the problem. On the client side, problems that could prevent the client reconnecting lost TCP connections have been fixed. On the server side, TCP memory pressure on the server forced the send buffer size to be lower than the size required to send a single Remote Procedure Call (RPC), which consequently caused the server to be unable to reply to the client. Code fixes are still being considered. To work around the problem, increase the minimum TCP buffer sizes, for example using:
echo "1048576 1048576 4194304" >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem
BZ#895336
Broadcom 5719 NIC could previously sometimes drop received jumbo frame packets due to cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors. This update modifies the tg3 driver so that CRC errors no longer occur and Broadcom 5719 NICs process jumbo frame packets as expected.
BZ#896224
When running a high thread workload of small-sized files on an XFS file system, sometimes, the system could become unresponsive or a kernel panic could occur. This occurred because the xfsaild daemon had a subtle code path that led to lock recursion on the xfsaild lock when a buffer in the AIL was already locked and an attempt was made to force the log to unlock it. This patch removes the dangerous code path and queues the log force to be invoked from a safe locking context with respect to xfsaild. This patch also fixes the race condition between buffer locking and buffer pinned state that exposed the original problem by rechecking the state of the buffer after a lock failure. The system no longer hangs and kernel no longer panics in this scenario.
BZ#902965
The NFSv4.1 client could stop responding while recovering from a server reboot on an NFSv4.1 or pNFS mount with delegations disabled. This could happen due to insufficient locking in the NFS code and several related bugs in the NFS and RPC scheduler code which could trigger a deadlock situation. This update applies a series of patches which prevent possible deadlock situations from occurring. The NFSv4.1 client now recovers and continue with workload as expected in the described situation.
BZ#1010840
The default sfc driver on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 allowed toggling the Large Receive Offset (LRO) flag on and off on a network device regardless of whether LRO was supported by the device or not. Therefore, when the LRO flag was enabled on devices without LRO support, the action had no effect and could confuse users. A patch to the sfc driver has been applied so that the sfc driver properly validates whether LRO is supported by the device. If the device does not support LRO, sfc disables the LRO flag so that users can no longer toggle it for that device.
BZ#886867
During device discovery, the system creates a temporary SCSI device with the LUN ID 0 if the LUN 0 is not mapped on the system. Previously, this led to a NULL pointer dereference because inquiry data was not allocated for the temporary LUN 0 device, which resulted in a kernel panic. This update adds a NULL pointer test in the underlying SCSI code, and the kernel no longer panics in this scenario.
BZ#886420
When a network interface (NIC) is running in promiscuous (PROMISC) mode, the NIC may receive and process VLAN tagged frames even though no VLAN is attached to the NIC. However, some network drivers, such as bnx2, igb, tg3, and e1000e did not handle processing of packets with VLAN tagged frames in PROMISC mode correctly if the frames had no VLAN group assigned. The drivers processed the packets with incorrect routines and various problems could occur; for example, a DHCPv6 server connected to a VLAN could assign an IPv6 address from the VLAN pool to a NIC with no VLAN interface. To handle the VLAN tagged frames without a VLAN group properly, the frames have to be processed by the VLAN code so the aforementioned drivers have been modified to restrain from performing a NULL value test of the packet's VLAN group field when the NIC is in PROMISC mode. This update also includes a patch fixing a bug where the bnx2x driver did not strip a VLAN header from the frame if no VLAN was configured on the NIC, and another patch that implements some register changes in order to enable receiving and transmitting of VLAN packets on a NIC even if no VLAN is registered with the card.
BZ#988460
When a slave device started up, the current_arp_slave parameter was unset but the active flags on the slave were not marked inactive. Consequently, more than one slave device with active flags in active-backup mode could be present on the system. A patch has been applied to fix this problem by marking the active flags inactive for a slave device before the current_arp_slave parameter is unset.
BZ#883575
Due to a bug in descriptor handling, the ioat driver did not correctly process pending descriptors on systems with the Intel Xeon Processor E5 family. Consequently, the CPU was utilized excessively on these systems. A patch has been applied to the ioat driver so the driver now determines pending descriptors correctly and CPU usage is normal again for the described processor family.
BZ#905561
A previous change in the bridge multicast code allowed sending general multicast queries in order to achieve faster convergence on startup. To prevent interference with multicast routers, send packets contained a zero source IP address. However, these packets interfered with certain multicast-aware switches, which resulted in the system being flooded with the IGMP membership queries with zero source IP address. A series of patches addresses this problem by disabling multicast queries by default and implementing multicast querier that allows to toggle up sending of general multicast queries if needed.
BZ#882413
A bug was causing bad block detection to try to isolate which blocks were bad in a device that had suffered a complete failure - even when bad block tracking was not turned on. This was causing very large delays in returning I/O errors when the entire set of RAID devices was lost to failure. The large delays caused problems during disaster recovery scenarios. The bad block tracking code is now properly disabled and errors return in a timely fashion when enough devices fail in a RAID array to exceed its redundancy.
BZ#876600
Previously, running commands such as "ls", "find" or "move" on a MultiVersion File System (MVFS) could cause a kernel panic. This happened because the d_validate() function, which is used for dentry validation, called the kmem_ptr_validate() function to validate a pointer to a parent dentry. The pointer could have been freed anytime so the kmem_ptr_validate() function could not guarantee the pointer to be dereferenced, which could lead to a NULL pointer derefence. This update modifies d_validate() to verify the parent-child relationship by traversing the parent dentry's list of child dentries, which solves this problem. The kernel no longer panics in the described scenario.
BZ#1008705
The sfc driver exposes on-board flash partitions using the MTD subsystem and it must expose up to 9 flash partitions per board. However, the MTD subsystem in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has a static limit of 32 flash partitions. As a consequence, the Solarflare tools cannot operate on all boards if more than 3 boards are installed, preventing firmware on some boards from being updated or queried for a version number. With this update, a new EFX_MCDI_REQUEST sub-command has been added to the driver-private SIOCEFX ioctl, which allows bypassing the MTD layer and sending requests directly to the controller's firmware. The Solarflare tools can now be used and the firmware on all installed devices can be updated as expected in this scenario.
BZ#871795
Previously, the VLAN code incorrectly cleared the timestamping interrupt bit for network devices using the igb driver. Consequently, timestamping failed on the igb network devices with Precision Time Protocol (PTP) support. This update modifies the igb driver to preserve the interrupt bit if interrupts are disabled.
BZ#869736
When using more than 4 GB of RAM with an AMD processor, reserved regions and memory holes (E820 regions) can also be placed above the 4 GB range. For example, on configurations with more than 1 TB of RAM, AMD processors reserve the 1012 GB - 1024 GB range for the Hyper Transport (HT) feature. However, the Linux kernel does not correctly handle E820 regions that are located above the 4 GB range. Therefore, when installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a machine with an AMD processor and 1 TB of RAM, a kernel panic occurred and the installation failed. This update modifies the kernel to exclude E820 regions located above the 4 GB range from direct mapping. The kernel also no longer maps the whole memory on boot but only finds memory ranges that are necessary to be mapped. The system can now be successfully installed on the above-described configuration.
BZ#867689
The kernel interface to ACPI had implemented error messaging incorrectly. The following error message was displayed when the system had a valid ACPI Error Record Serialization Table (ERST) and the pstore.backend kernel parameter had been used to disable use of ERST by the pstore interface:
ERST: Could not register with persistent store
However, the same message was also used to indicate errors precluding registration. A series of patches modifies the relevant ACPI code so that ACPI now properly distinguish between different cases and accordingly prints unique and informative messages.
BZ#965132
When setting up a bonding device, a certain flag was used to distinguish between TLB and ALB modes. However, usage of this flag in ALB mode allowed enslaving NICs before the bond was activated. This resulted in enslaved NICs not having unique MAC addresses as required, and consequent loss of "reply" packets sent to the slaves. This patch modifies the function responsible for the setup of the slave's MAC address so the flag is no longer needed to discriminate ALB mode from TLB and the flag was removed. The described problem no longer occur in this situation.
BZ#920752
A bug in the do_filp_open() function caused it to exit early if any write access was requested on a read-only file system. This prevented the opening of device nodes on a read-only file system. With this update, the do_filp_open() has been fixed to no longer exit if a write request is made on a read-only file system.
BZ#981741
A dentry leak occurred in the FUSE code when, after a negative lookup, a negative dentry was neither dropped nor was the reference counter of the dentry decremented. This triggered a BUG() macro when unmounting a FUSE subtree containing the dentry, resulting in a kernel panic. A series of patches related to this problem has been applied to the FUSE code and negative dentries are now properly dropped so that triggering the BUG() macro is now avoided.
BZ#924804
This update reverts two previously-included qla2xxx patches. These patches changed the fibre channel target port discovery procedure, which resulted in some ports not being discovered in some corner cases. Reverting these two patches fixes the discovery issues.
BZ#957821
Due a bug in the memory mapping code, the fadvise64() system call sometimes did not flush all the relevant pages of the given file from cache memory. A patch addresses this problem by adding a test condition that verifies whether all the requested pages were flushed and retries with an attempt to empty the LRU pagevecs in the case of test failure.
BZ#957231
The xen-netback and xen-netfront drivers cannot handle packets with size greater than 64 KB including headers. The xen-netfront driver previously did not account for any headers when determining the maximum size of GSO (Generic Segmentation Offload). Consequently, Xen DomU guest operations could have caused a network DoS issue on DomU when sending packets larger than 64 KB. This update adds a patch that corrects calculation of the GSO maximum size and the problem no longer occurs.
BZ#848085
A possible race in the tty layer could result in a kernel panic after triggering the BUG_ON() macro. As a workaround, the BUG_ON() macro has been replaced by the WARN_ON() macro, which allows for avoiding the kernel panic and investigating the race problem further.
BZ#980876
A bug in the network bridge code allowed an internal function to call code which was not atomic-safe while holding a spin lock. Consequently, a "BUG: scheduling while atomic" error has been triggered and a call trace logged by the kernel. This update applies a patch that orders the function properly so the function no longer holds a spin lock while calling code which is not atomic-safe. The aforementioned error with a call trace no longer occurs in this case.
BZ#916806
An NFSv4 client could previously enter a deadlock situation with the state recovery thread during state recovery after a reboot of an NFSv4 server. This happened because the client did not release the NFSv4 sequence ID of an OPEN operation that was requested before the reboot. This problem is resolved by releasing the sequence ID before the client starts waiting for the server to recover.
BZ#859562
A bug in the device-mapper RAID kernel module was preventing the "sync" directive from being honored. The result was that users were unable to force their RAID arrays to undergo a complete resync if desired. This has been fixed and users can use 'lvchange --resync my_vg/my_raid_lv' to force a complete resynchronization on their LVM RAID arrays.

Enhancements

BZ#823012
This update provides simplified performance analysis for software on Linux on System z by using the Linux perf tool to access the hardware performance counters.
BZ#829506
The fnic driver previously allowed I/O requests with the number of SGL descriptors greater than is supported by Cisco UCS Palo adapters. Consequently, the adapter returned any I/O request with more than 256 SGL descriptors with an error indicating invalid SGLs. A patch has been applied to limit the maximum number of supported SGLs in the fnic driver to 256 and the problem no longer occurs.
BZ#840454
To transmit data, for example, trace data, from guests to hosts, a low-overhead communication channel was required. Support for the splice() call has been added to the virtio_console module in the Linux kernel. This enables sending guest kernel data to the host without extra copies of the data being made inside the guest. Low-overhead communication between the guest Linux kernel and host userspace is performed via virtio-serial.
BZ#888903
A new MTIOCTOP operation, MTWEOFI, has been added to the SCSI tape driver, which allows writing of "filemarks" with the "immediate" bit. This allows a SCSI tape drive to preserve the content of its buffer, enabling the next file operation to start immediately. This can significantly increase write performance for applications that have to write multiple small files to the tape while it also reduces tape weariness.
BZ#913650
Previously, a user needed to unmount, deactivate their RAID LV, and re-activate it in order to restore a transiently failed device in their array. Now it is possible to restore such devices without unmounting by simply running 'lvchange --refresh'.
BZ#923212
Open vSwitch (OVS) is an open-source, multi-layer software switch designed to be used as a virtual switch in virtualized server environments. Starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, the Open vSwitch kernel module is included as an enabler for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. Open vSwitch is only supported in conjunction with Red Hat products containing the accompanying user-space packages. Without theses packages, Open vSwitch will not function and cannot be used with other Red Hat Enterprise Linux variants.
BZ#928983
The RHEL6.5 bfa driver changes behavior of the dev_loss_tmo value such that it can only be set to a value greater than the bfa driver specific path_tov value. The minimum default value that the dev_loss_tmo can be set to is 31 seconds. Attempting to set the dev_loss_tmo value lower than 31 seconds without lowering the default bfa path_tov value will not succeed.
BZ#929257
Error recovery support has been added to the flash device driver, which allows hardware service upgrades without negative impact on I/O of flash devices.
BZ#929259
The crypto adapter resiliency feature has been added. This feature provides System z typical RAS for cryptographic adapters through comprehensive failure recovery. For example, this feature handles unexpected failures or changes caused by Linux guest relocation, suspend and resume activities or configuration changes.
BZ#929262
The "fuzzy live dump" feature has been added. With this feature kernel dumps from running Linux systems can be created, to allow problem analysis without taking down systems. Because the Linux system continues running while the dump is written, and kernel data structures are changing during the dump process, the resulting dump contains inconsistencies.
BZ#929264, BZ#929264
The kernel now provides an offline interface for DASD devices. Instead of setting a DASD device offline and returning all outstanding I/O requests as failed, with this interface you can set a DASD device offline and write all outstanding data to the device before setting the device offline.
BZ#929274
The kernel now provides the Physical Channel ID (PCHID) mapping that enables hardware detection with a machine-wide unique identifier.
BZ#929275
The kernel now provides VEPA mode support. VEPA mode routes traffic between virtual machines on the same mainframe through an external switch. The switch then becomes a single point of control for security, filtering, and management.
BZ#755486, BZ#755486
Message Transfer Part Level 3 User Adaptation Layer (M3UA) is a protocol defined by the IETF standard for transporting MTP Level 3 user part signaling messages over IP using Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) instead of telephony equipment like ISDN and PSTN. With this update, M3AU measurement counters have been included for SCTP.
BZ#818344
Support for future Intel 2D and 3D graphics has been added to allow systems using future Intel processors to be certified through the Red Hat Hardware Certification program.
BZ#826061
In certain storage configurations (for example, configurations with many LUNs), the SCSI error handling code can spend a large amount of time issuing commands such as TEST UNIT READY to unresponsive storage devices. A new sysfs parameter, eh_timeout, has been added to the SCSI device object, which allows configuration of the timeout value for TEST UNIT READY and REQUEST SENSE commands used by the SCSI error handling code. This decreases the amount of time spent checking these unresponsive devices. The default value of eh_timeout is 10 seconds, which was the timeout value used prior to adding this functionality.
BZ#839470, BZ#839470
With this update, 12Gbps LSI SAS devices are now supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
BZ#859446
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 introduces the Orlov block allocator that provides better locality for files which are truly related to each other and likely to be accessed together. In addition, when resource groups are highly contended, a different group is used to maximize performance.
BZ#869622
The mdadm tool now supports the TRIM commands for RAID0, RAID1, RAID10 and RAID5.
BZ#880142
Network namespace support for OpenStack has been added. Network namespaces (netns) is a lightweight container-based virtualization technology. A virtual network stack can be associated with a process group. Each namespace has its own loopback device and process space. Virtual or real devices can be added to each network namespace, and the user can assign IP addresses to these devices and use them as a network node.
BZ#908606
Support for dynamic hardware partitioning and system board slot recognition has been added. The dynamic hardware partitioning and system board slot recognition features alert high-level system middleware or applications for reconfiguration and allow users to grow the system to support additional workloads without reboot.
BZ#914771, BZ#920155, BZ#914797, BZ#914829, BZ#914832, BZ#914835
An implementation of the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) according to IEEE standard 1588 for Linux was introduced as a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4. The PTP infrastructure, both kernel and user space, is now fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. Network driver time stamping support now also includes the following drivers: bnx2x, tg3, e1000e, igb, ixgbe, and sfc.
BZ#862340
The Solarflare driver (sfc) has been updated to add PTP support as a Technology Preview.
BZ#918316
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, users can change the cryptography hash function from MD5 to SHA1 for Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) connections.
BZ#922129
The pm8001/pm80xx driver adds support for PMC-Sierra Adaptec Series 6H and 7H SAS/SATA HBA cards as well as PMC Sierra 8081, 8088, and 8089 chip based SAS/SATA controllers.
BZ#922299
VMware Platform Drivers Updates The VMware network para-virtualized driver has been updated to the latest upstream version.
BZ#922941
The Error-correcting code (ECC) memory has been enabled for future generation of AMD processors. This feature provides the ability to check for performance and errors by accessing ECC memory related counters and status bits.
BZ#922965
Device support is enabled in the operating system for future Intel System-on-Chip (SOC) processors. These include Dual Atom processors, memory controller, SATA, Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter, System Management Bus (SMBUS), USB and Intel Legacy Block (ILB - lpc, timers, SMBUS (i2c_801 module)).
BZ#947944
Kernel Shared Memory (KSM) has been enhanced to consider non-uniform memory access (NUMA) when coalescing pages, which improves performance of the applications on the system. Also, additional page types have been included to increase the density of applications available for Red Hat OpenShift.
BZ#949805
FUSE (Filesystem in User Space) is a framework that allows for development of file systems purely in the user space without requiring modifications to the kernel. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 delivers performance enhancements for user space file systems that use FUSE, for example, GlusterFS (Red Hat Storage).
BZ#864597
The default TCP stack buffers are too large for high bandwidth applications that fully utilize the Ethernet link. This could result in a situation where connection bandwidth could not be fully utilized and could be distributed unequally if the link was shared by multiple client devices. To resolve this problem, a new feature, TCP Small Queues (TSQ), has been introduced to the TCP code. The TSQ feature reduces a number of TCP packets in xmit queues, TCP round-trip time (RTT), and the congestion window (CWND) size. It also mitigates an impact of a possible bufferbloat problem. This change also includes a patch that resolves a performance problem on mlx4 devices caused by setting the default value of the Tx coalescing too high.
All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 users are advised to install these updated packages, which correct these issues, and fix the bugs and add the enhancements noted in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 Release Notes and Technical Notes. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.

8.83. kexec-tools

Updated kexec-tools packages that fix several bus and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The kexec-tools packages contain the /sbin/kexec binary and utilities that together form the user-space component of the kernel's kexec feature. The /sbin/kexec binary facilitates a new kernel to boot using the kernel's kexec feature either on a normal or a panic reboot. The kexec fastboot mechanism allows booting a Linux kernel from the context of an already running kernel.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1015764
Previously, in the mkdumprd utility, the strip_comments() function was not implemented correctly. When arguments were passed to strip_comments(), it only took the first argument into account and skipped the rest. As a consequence, it passed the "makedumpfile" argument to the $config_val variable, but the parameters for "makedumpfile" were missed. With this update, the strip_comments() function has been modified. As a result, it no longer skips arguments passed to it.
BZ#886572
When the kdump file system resided on a logical volume or a volume group with another independent and encrypted device, the mkdumprd utility exited with an error message when trying to access the encrypted device, preventing kdump from functioning properly. A patch has been provided to address this problem and kdump is now properly reconfigured and restarted in the described scenario, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#920705
Certain multi-port network cards return the same PCI bus address for all ports. When the kdump utility maps the network ports, it cannot differentiate one network port from another on these cards. Consequently, when different network ports were on different networks, kdump failed to dump data over NFS or SSH. This update ensures that the MAP_NET_BY_MAC variable is set in the described scenario and kdump now dumps data for all ports as expected.
BZ#883543
Previously, a udev rule in the 98-kexec.rules file spawned processes that restarted the kdump tool with each memory added. To fix this bug, the "condrestart" parameter is used when attempting to restart a service that was previously running. As a result, kdump is no longer restarted when a restart is not needed.
BZ#921142
Previously, kernel modules in the extra_modules list were overridden by the built-in blacklist. Consequently, kdump was unable to load the mlx4_core and mlx4_en modules and dump data over network cards using these modules. With this update, modules in the extra_modules list are not excluded if they are blacklisted and kdump can use them as expected.
BZ#1008543
Previously, in makedumpfile, the dumpfile header had a field which was inherited from the deprecated "diskdump" facility. The field was used by the crash utility as a delimiter to determine whether a physical address read request was legitimate. The field could not handle Physical Frame Number (PFN) values greater than 32-bits and such values were truncated. This update adds three new fields to the header. As a result, the dumpfile header in makedumpfile correctly handels PFN values greater than 32-bits.
BZ#876667
Previously, for some kernel modules, the "modprobe --show-depends" command's output did not have the "insmod" prefix for every line. Consequently, the mkdumprd utility failed to load as the current code assumed that each line started with the "insmod" prefix. The code has been modified to only match lines starting with "insmod" in awk scripts. As a result, mkdumprd no longer fails to load in this scenario.
BZ#1009207
Previously, in cyclic mode, the makedumpfile recalculated incorrectly the size of the cyclic buffer size. As a consequence, makedumpfile did not update the length of the range of a cycle in page frame numbers, which caused a buffer overrun or a segmentation violation. Furthermore, due to the divideup() function in the recalculations, the cyclic buffer size became too much aligned and less efficient. A patch has been provided to fix these bugs and the aforementioned problems no longer occur in this scenario.
BZ#1010103
The x86_64 kernel is a relocatable kernel, and there can be a gap between the physical address statically assigned to the kernel data and texts, and the address that is really assigned to each object corresponding to the kernel symbols. The gap is the phys_base() function. The makedump utility calculates the phys_base in an ad-hoc way that compares the addresses of some of occurrences of "Linux kernel" strings in certain range of the vmcore. As a consequence, makedumpfile failed calculating phys_base and also failed converting a vmcore. This bug has now been fixed and makedumpfile calculates phys_base correctly and convers vmcore normally.
BZ#893764
Previously, setting empty Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) options, parsed from the /etc/dasd.conf file, resulted in displaying environment variables. As a consequence, restarting the kdump service displayed the complete kdump script. After this update, if there are no options specified in the /etc/dasd.conf file for a device, the kdump script proceeds to the next one. As a result, restarting the kdump service no longer displays the complete kdump script.
BZ#918372
Previously, kdump data written on a raw device was not completely flushed. As a consequence, the saved vmcore was occasionally incomplete. This update uses the blockdev tool to flush out block device buffers. As a result, vmcore saved on a raw device is now always complete.
BZ#903529
Previously, because Storage Class Memory (SCM) devices did not expose the same sysfs attributes as Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) disks, the mkdumprd utility failed to determine the list of "critical disks" for writing a dump file. As a consequence, certain SCM devices were not correctly handled by mkdumprd, resulting in an infinite loop when trying to specify a file system on such a device as target for kdump. After this update, mkdumprd now handles waiting for SCM devices based on the device's storage increment address, a property which uniquely identifies an SCM device across reboots. As a result, mkdumprd now successfully determines the list of "critical disks" for writing a dump file and an infinite loop no longer occurs.
BZ#906601
Previously, on a system configured with multipath support, the mkdumprd tool pushed the code handling multipath devices into the kdump initrd. As a consequence, the kdump utility failed to capture vmcore on multipath devices. This update introduces a mechanism where the call to the kpartx utility is delayed until the "dmsetup ls" command lists the device names which match the multipath device where a vmcore is going to be captured. As a result, mkdumprd now waits until the multipath devices are created and then successfully captures a vmcore on them.
BZ#977651
Previously, when Red Hat Enterprise Linux was configured to use the hugepages parameter, the kdump kernel also used this parameter. As a consequence, due to its limited memory, using hugepages could lead to an Out Of Memory (OOM) error for the kdump kernel. With this update, hugepages and hugepagesz kernel parameters are not used by the kdump kernel when the Red Hat Enterprise Linux is using them. If the user wants to explicitly use hugepages in the kdump kernel, they can be specified through the KERNEL_COMMANDLINE_APPEND option in the /etc/sysconfig/kdump file.
BZ#963948
Previously, when a VMware guest was added additional RAM, multiple instances of the kdump.init script were started concurrently. As a consequence, a race condition occurred among the kdump.init instances. By introducing a global mutex lock, now only one instance can acquire this lock and run, others will be waiting for the lock in queue. As a result, the kdump.init instances are run in serial order and a race condition no longer occurs in this scenario.
BZ#951035
Previously, when the e2fsprogs package, which contains tools used by the mkdumprd utility, was not installed on the system, mkdumprd displayed a misleading error message. With this update, the error message has been improved to explicitly inform the user which of these tools is missing.

Enhancements

BZ#959449
This update allows the kdump tool to work with an arbitrary bridge, bond or vlan names over a network. Now, it is possible to name a device without following the established naming conventions, for example, bonding devices do not need to start with "bond". The user can determine whether a network device is a bond, bridge or vlan by checking for the existence of specific directories in the /sys/ or /proc/ directories.
BZ#871522
With this update, kexec-tools now respect the memory limit while building crash memory ranges on a 64-bit PowerPC. The kernel exports memory limit information through the /proc/device-tree file, which kexec-tools now read and limit the crash memory ranges accordingly.
BZ#825476, BZ#902147, BZ#902148
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the makedumpfile utility supports the Lempel–Ziv–Oberhumer (LZO) and snappy compression formats. Using these compression formats instead of the zlib format is quicker, in particular when compressing data with randomized content.
BZ#947621
This update includes changes to allow filtering of poisoned pages during a crash dump capture. The user can now decide if poisoned pages are dumped. Furthermore, filtering can increase dumping speed.
BZ#797231
This update adds an SELinux relabeling during kdump service startup. The kdump service now relabels files in the dumping path which have an incorrect or missing label.
BZ#909402
In previous Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases, support for SSH FIPS mode was incomplete. This update adds the relevant library files and *.hmac files to the kdump kernel. The kdump utility can now work in SSH FIPS mode.
BZ#975642
This update adds documentation for the "--allow-missing" mkdumprd option to the mkdumprd(8) manual page.
Users of kexec-tools are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.84. ksh

Updated ksh packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
KornShell (KSH) is a Unix shell developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories, which is backward-compatible with the Bourne shell (Bash) and includes many features of the C shell. The most recent version is KSH-93. KornShell complies with the POSIX.2 standard (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992).

Note

The ksh package has been upgraded to upstream version 20120801, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#840568)

Bug Fixes

BZ#761551
Previously, the ksh shell did not set any editing mode as default, which caused various usability problems in interactive mode and with shell auto-completion. This update sets emacs editing mode as default for new users. As a result, the usability is significantly improved and the shell auto-completion works as expected.
BZ#858263
Previously, the ksh internal counter of jobs was too small. Consequently, when a script used a number of subshells in a loop, a counter overflow could occur causing the ksh shell to terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. This update modifies ksh to use bigger types for counter variables. As a result, ksh no longer crashes in the described scenario.
BZ#903750
Previously, the ksh shell did not compute an offset for fixed size variables correctly. As a consequence, when assigning a right-justified variable with a fixed width to a smaller variable, the new variable could have an incorrect content. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and the assignment now proceeds as expected.
BZ#913110
Previously, the output of command substitutions was not always redirected properly. Consequently, the output in a here-document could be lost. This update fixes the redirection code for command substitutions and the here-document now contains the output as expected.
BZ#921455, BZ#982142
Using arrays inside of ksh functions, command aliases, or automatically loaded functions caused memory leaks to occur. The underlying source code has been modified to fix this bug and the memory leaks no longer occur in the described scenario.
BZ#922851
Previously, the ksh SIGTSTP signal handler could trigger another SIGTSTP signal. Consequently, ksh could enter an infinite loop. This updated version fixes the SIGTSTP signal processing and ksh now handles the signal without any problems.
BZ#924440
Previously, the ksh shell did not resize the file descriptor list every time it was necessary. This could lead to memory corruption when several file descriptors were used. As a consequence, ksh terminated unexpectedly. This updated version resizes the file descriptor list every time it is needed, and ksh no longer crashes in the described scenario.
BZ#960034
Previously, the ksh shell ignored the "-m" argument specified by the command line. As a consequence, ksh did not enable monitor mode and the user had to enable it in a script. With this update, ksh no longer ignores the argument so that the user is able to enable monitor mode from the command line as expected.
BZ#994251
The ksh shell did not handle I/O redirections from command substitutions inside a pipeline correctly. Consequently, the output of certain commands could be lost. With this update, the redirections have been fixed and data is no longer missing from the command outputs.
Users of ksh are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.85. ledmon

Updated ledmon packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The ledmon and ledctl utilities are user-space applications designed to control LEDs associated with each slot in an enclosure or a drive bay. There are two types of systems: 2-LED system (Activity LED, Status LED) and 3-LED system (Activity LED, Locate LED, Fail LED). Users must have root privileges to use this application.

Note

The ledmon packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.78, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#922976, BZ#876593, BZ#887370)
Users of ledmon are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.86. libXcursor

Updated libXcursor packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The X.Org's X11 libXcursor package provides a runtime library for cursor management, designed to help locate and load cursors.

Bug Fix

BZ#949586
In the last rebuild of libXcursor, the Icon Theme was changed to Adwaita, which was not available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. To fix this bug, the Icon Theme has been changed back to dmz-aa for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Users of libXcursor are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.

8.87. libcgroup

Updated libcgroup packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The libcgroup packages provide tools and libraries to manage and monitor control groups.

Bug Fixes

BZ#972893
Previously, the pam_cgoup pluggable authentication module (PAM) did not use caching. As a consequence, when a system had several thousand users and the cgrules.conf file contained several thousand lines of configuration settings, the login time could take several seconds. With this update, the libcgroup code no longer reads the /etc/passwd file once for every line in cgrules.conf, and the login time is no longer affected in the described scenario.
BZ#863172
Prior to this update, the cgroup files did not have write permissions set correctly. Consequently, members of the group that owned the cgroup files could not modify their content. The group permissions have been updated, and the members of the group can now modify the content of the cgroup files.
BZ#921328
Previously, the behavior of the cgred service when opening the configuration file was not set correctly. Consequently, cgred failed to start if the configuration file was missing or empty. Explicit checks for the existence of the configuration file have been removed, and cgred now starts with a missing or empty configuration file as expected.
BZ#912425
The code in the cg_get_pid_from_flags() function assumed that every entry in the /etc/cgrules.conf file had the process name specified. As a consequence, if the entry in the /etc/cgrules.conf file did not specify the process name, the cgred service terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. This update allows the code to accept empty process names and cgred no longer crashes.
BZ#946953
Prior to this update, the permissions of the /bin/cgclassify file were set incorrectly. As a consequence, the "--sticky" option of the cgclassify command was ignored when running under a non-privileged user. The file permissions of /bin/cgclassify have been updated, and the "--sticky" option now works correctly for regular users.
BZ#753334
Previously, using commas in the lexical analyzer was not supported. As a consequence, the cgconfig service failed to parse commas in the cgconfig.conf file. Support for commas in the lexical analyzer has been added, and cgconfig can now successfully parse commas in cgconfig.conf.
BZ#924399
The cgrulesengd daemon had different default logging level than the rest of the library. Consequently, the log messages were inconsistent. With this update, the logging level of the cgrulesengd daemon and the library has been unified, and the log messages are now consistent as expected.
BZ#809550
Prior to this update, the cgcreate(1) manual page contained the invalid "-s" option in the synopsis. This update removes this option.
BZ#961844
Previously, the cgred service was starting too early in the boot process. As a consequence, if some services started before cgred, they could avoid being restricted. The boot priority of cgred has been lowered, and all services are now restricted correctly.

Enhancement

BZ#589535
After this update, the cgred daemon supports automated control groups for every user in any UNIX group that logs in. A template is now used to create a new control group automatically, and every process the user launches is started in the appropriate group, which makes managing multiple users easier.
Users of libcgroup are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

8.88. libdrm

Updated libdrm packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Direct Rendering Manager runtime library (libdrm) provides a user-space interface library for direct rendering clients.

Note

The libdrm packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.4.45, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#914774)
Users of libdrm are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

8.89. libguestfs

Updated libguestfs packages that fix one security issue, several bugs, and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
Libguestfs is a library and set of tools for accessing and modifying guest disk images.

Note

The libguestfs package has been upgraded to upstream version 1.20.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#958183)

Security Fix

CVE-2013-4419
It was found that guestfish, which enables shell scripting and command line access to libguestfs, insecurely created the temporary directory used to store the network socket when started in server mode. A local attacker could use this flaw to intercept and modify other user's guestfish command, allowing them to perform arbitrary guestfish actions with the privileges of a different user, or use this flaw to obtain authentication credentials.
This issue was discovered by Michael Scherer of the Red Hat Regional IT team.

Bug Fixes

BZ#892291
Previously, when the guestmount utility failed to create a hard link, an incorrect error message was returned. Consequently, information about the true cause of error was not displayed. With this update, the error handling in guestmount has been fixed and correct messages are now displayed in the described case.
BZ#892834
When attempting to rename a symbolic link with the guestmount utility, guestmount followed the link instead of overwriting it. With this update, a guestfs_rename API has been added, which allows guestmount to rename target files correctly.
BZ#908255