RHBA-2008:0437 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated mkinitrd packages that fix several bugs and add enhancements are
now available.

Description

The mkinitrd utility creates file system images for use as initial ramdisk
(initrd) images.

These updated packages fix the following bugs:

• running the "mkinitrd --without-usb" command did not prevent USB modules

from being loaded at boot time. The behavior of "withusb" has been changed,
so that it only runs if it is explicitly set, which resolves this issue.

• the USB HCD modules were not loaded in the correct order, which may have

caused errors, such as "device descriptor read/all, error -71", when using
USB devices. In these updated packages, the USB HCD modules are loaded in
the correct order, which resolves this issue.

• when booting from LVM volumes, initrd attempts to active all logical

volumes. If there was a full snapshot, initrd failed to recover, resulting
in a failure to boot. Errors such as the following may have occurred:

nash received SIGSEGV! Backtrace
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

• on certain hardware, running the "mkinitrd" command caused errors

similar to the following:

end_request: I/O error, dev [device], sector 0

• multipath when using iSCSI targets did not work correctly.
• installing kernel packages on IBM System z systems may have caused

errors similar to the following:

/sbin/mkinitrd: line 939: [: : integer expression expected
WARNING: No module zfcp found for kernel [kernel-version], continuing
anyway

• in certain situations, after iSCSI installations on Itanium

architectures, a post-install panic occurred during boot.

• when a system with iSCSI devices experienced network problems, causing

I/O errors, and the system was then restarted, "/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit" did
not force a fsck check on the iSCSI devices, as it would for other locally
attached disks. In these updated packages, a new mount option, "_rnetdev",
has been added. The "_rnetdev" option is similar to "_netdev", except that
a "fsck -a" check is run on iSCSI devices during "rc.sysinit". This fsck
check is required for iSCSI root devices.

• a bug, which resulted in zImage compiled kernels failing to boot on

certain IBM hardware, has been resolved.

• performing a Kickstart installation on a system that had its root

partition on a logical volume, formatted as GFS2, caused errors similar to
the following:

lock_nolock: Unknown symbol
gfs2_register_lockproto

As well, errors similar the following may have occurred during the kernel
post script:

cpio: ./sbin: Invalid argument
cpio: ./dev/ram: Invalid argument
cpio: ./bin/modprobe: Invalid argument

This issue may have also manifested as a kernel panic during post-install
boot, or delayed installation time on PowerPC architectures.

• in certain situations, an infinite loop occurred when creating a new

initrd for an installed kernel on IBM System z architectures.

As well, these updated packages add the following enhancements:

• support for iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT) has been added.
• the "MODULE_FIRMWARE" macro has been added, to allow firmware loading and

updating.

• nash has been updated to support spaces in kernel command line

parameters.

Users of mkinitrd are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
resolve these issues and add these enhancements.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
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 - 235277 - mkinitrd needs to pull in MODULE_FIRMWARE firmware
• BZ - 240779 - nash support for spaces in kernel command line
• BZ - 244202 - Boot fails if any LVM snapshots are full
• BZ - 428723 - [NetApp 5.2 bug] root on multipath (iSCSI) not supported in mkinitrd
• BZ - 432776 - /sbin/mkinitrd: line 939: [: : integer expression expected
• BZ - 435165 - iscsi install fails to boot post-install
• BZ - 435717 - iscsi root device never gets fscked when there's an i/o error
• BZ - 438743 - mkinitrd creates initrd.img/init script with ~6000 insmod lines for lock_nolock.ko, and gfs2.ko
• BZ - 439371 - findstoragedriverinsys () line 354: "sh: cd: slaves: No such file or directory"

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)