RHBA-2009:1486 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated device-mapper-multipath package that fixes a bug is now
available.

Description

device-mapper-multipath provides three tools to manage multipath devices:
multipath, which scans systems for multipath devices and assembles them;
multipathd, which detects path failures and re-initializes multipath to
update and correct these paths; and kpartx, which enables partitioning of
multipath devices. These tools give the device-mapper-multipath kernel
module instructions on what to do, and manage the creation and removal of
partitions for device-mapper devices.

This updated package addresses the following bug:

• the multipathd daemon creates one thread per multipath device (as well as

additional threads for logging and path verification) and these threads
need to be locked in memory. The daemon also seeks to limit the amount of
memory these threads consume. On some architectures, however, this failed
and the threads consumed their default amount of memory; 10 MB. The
multipathd daemon now correctly limits the thread size on all
architectures. (BZ#524563)

Multipath users should upgrade to this updated package, which resolves this
issue.

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 for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 4.8 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 4.8 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 4.8 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 IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 4.8 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 4.8 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 4.8 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 524563 - Multipathd consuming lot of memory and cpu

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)