RHBA-2008:0410 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated mdadm package that fixes several bugs is now available.

Description

mdadm is used to create, manage, and monitor Linux MD (software RAID)
devices. It provides similar functionality to the raidtools package.

This updated package fixes the following bugs:

• running the "mdadm -Q /dev/[device]" command did not return whether

"/dev/[device]" was a component of an md array. This could break scripts
that search for output such as "No md super block found" and "not an md
component". In this updated package, the "-Q" option has been reverted to
the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 behavior, and now returns "No md super block
found, not an md component" if no super block is found.

• the init scripts in this package (mdmonitor and mdmpd) were not Linux

Standard Base (LSB) compliant. Amongst other things, the LSB specification
details that "/etc/init.d/[init script] status" should always return the
status of the facility, even if it is not configured to run. It also details
which return codes should be used for certain failures, so that an external
program can easily tell by the return code why something did not behave as
expected. This update brings the scripts into LSB compliance.

• due to leaked file descriptors, if SELinux was set to "Enforcing" mode,

mdadm was unable to send email warnings if a RAID it was monitoring changed
to the degraded state. A new SELinux policy has been added, that includes
"dontaudit mdadm_t user_home_dir_t:dir { getattr search };", which resolves
this issue.

• in the previous versions of the mdadm package, when creating an array

using an internal bitmap, under certain conditions, an array would be
created where the bitmap and the file system data overlapped, resulting in
the bitmap corrupting the file system.

As well, this updated package upgrades mdadm to the latest upstream
version, 2.6.4, and includes several bug fixes that are not listed here.
For a full list of changes, please refer to the mdadm changelog located
here: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=32037

All users of mdadm are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 242686 - Wrong init script
• BZ - 335911 - SELinux denies from mdadm on bootup

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)