RHBA-2009:1004 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated udev package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The udev package implements a dynamic device directory providing only the
devices present on the system. This dynamic directory runs in user-space,
dynamically creates and removes devices, provides consistent naming and a
user-space API. udev replaces devfs in order to provide greater hot plug
functionality.

This updated udev package includes fixes for the following bugs:

• previously in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the /dev/tape directory entry

consisted of a symbolic link to the first tape device. However, an upgrade
to the udev rules in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 caused the /dev/tape
symbolic link to become a directory with symbolic links to tape devices
within that directory. This update reverts the udev rule back to the
previous behavior so as to remain consistent with previous Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4 releases.

Note that the newer udev rules are the default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5: /dev/tape is a directory which contains persistent symbolic links to
tape devices.

• the scsi_id(8) man page was unclear about the fact that the "-d device"

option must be used in conjunction with the "-s sysfs-device" option, and
has been updated to reflect this information.

• under certain circumstances, the scsi_id command unnecessarily issued the

following error message: "close failed: No medium found".

• on occasion, the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) was unable to find volume

groups and LVM initialization would fail during the boot sequence. This
occurred when udev was not "settled" and was still performing tasks at the
time when LVM attempted to locate volume groups, and has been resolved in
this updated package.

• systems with large number of Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs) could result in

out-of-memory errors and system crashes due to a udev locking issue. This
has been resolved so that systems with large numbers of LUNs still perform
as expected during SCSI device scans.

• handheld devices such as PDAs are now correctly recognized and can be

used by non-root users, and the /dev/pilot directory entry now points to
the correct device if the handheld is the sole USB device which provides a
serial terminal.

All users of udev 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/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 198704 - LVM2 init may fail if dm_mod is still checking disks
• BZ - 459969 - [NetApp 4.8 bug] OOM gets triggered while discovering a large number of LUNs
• BZ - 462538 - [4.7] scsi_id command outputs an unnecessary error message

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)