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3.11. device-mapper-multipath

Updated device-mapper-multipath packages that fix one bug are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
The device-mapper-multipath packages provide tools to manage multipath devices using the device-mapper multipath kernel module.

Bug Fix

BZ#1065229
Previously, if the user created duplicate aliases, or aliases that matched the user_friendly names, those devices switched their paths, and thus caused multipath device path corruption. The underlying code has been fixed, and the multipath utility now refuses to reload a device with an existing duplicate alias. In addition, multipath now issues a warning message on potentially conflicting aliases. As a result, multipath no longer corrupts data if users name two devices identically.
Users of device-mapper-multipath are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.
Updated device-mapper-multipath packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
The device-mapper-multipath packages provide tools for managing multipath devices using the device-mapper multipath kernel module.

Bug Fixes

BZ#1092603
A bug in Device Mapper Multipath (DM-Multipath) allowed the main multipathd thread to free memory that was still being used by other multipathd threads during system shutdown. Consequently, the multipathd daemon terminated unexpectedly due to use-after-free memory corruption. This update avoids this problem by ensuring that memory being used by multipathd threads is freed in the final cleanup upon the exit of multipathd.
BZ#1039935
DM-Multipath allowed configurations with duplicate name aliases mapped to different World Wide Identifiers (WWIDs). However, such configurations could result in path corruption when a device was reloaded and used the paths of another device. This update ensures that DM-Multipath refuses to reload a device if its alias matches another device. DM-Multipath now also warns the user on potentially conflicting aliases.
BZ#1086949
The multipathd daemon could attempt to reconfigure before it was completely set up after receiving the SIGHUP signal on startup. As a consequence, multipathd terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, multipathd now blocks the SIGHUP signal until it has completed its initialization.
Users of device-mapper-multipath are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.