RHEA-2002:317 - Product Enhancement Advisory

Topic

An updated kernel for Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 for the Itanium
Processor is now available. The kernel adds Intel E8870 chipset support and
several optimizations, fixes a number of bugs, and updates several drivers.

[Updated 28 August 2003]
Added CAN-2003-0018 as a security issue that was first fixed by this
advisory (there are no changes to the packages themselves).

Description

The Linux kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system.

Linux kernel versions 2.4.10 through 2.4.21-pre4 do not properly handle the
O_DIRECT feature, which allows local attackers with write privileges to
read portions of previously deleted files, or cause file system corruption.

The updated kernel available with this errata has added support for the
Intel E8870 chipset, including proper support for 32-bit PCI cards.
Several kernel optimizations are also included.

Vary I/O permits more efficent raw I/O. Usually raw I/O requests are
divided into 512-byte units and then subsequently recombined. Vary I/O
allows drivers to specify that raw I/O request should not be divided. The
MPT fusion, qla2xxx, qla1280,and qlogicisp drivers enable vary I/O.

Asynchronus I/O permits efficient overlap of CPU and I/O processing, which
can dramatically increase the performance for demanding applications.

The hugetlb file system makes efficient use of the large page size support
that the Itanium (IA64) architecture provides. The default hugetlb page
size is 256MB (exclusively for use with Oracle).

Additional features include:

• lazy floating point save and restore optimizations
• support for 128 SCSI disks
• elevator cache optimization
• serialized DMA on the IDE controller for CDROM and HDD

Bug fixes include:

• proper x86 emulation
• IA64 MegaRAID driver
• tulip driver phys reset

The upgraded kernel adds the qla2xxx_v6 driver and updates the following
drivers:

• qla1280
• cciss
• forte

Errata notes, release notes, and driver disks are available at the
following URL:

http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/rhel

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied, especially the additional
packages from RHSA-2002:205 and RHSA-2002:206 respectively.

The procedure for upgrading the kernel manually is documented at:

http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/howto/kernel-upgrade/

Please read the directions for your architecture carefully before
proceeding with the kernel upgrade.

Please note that this update is also available via Red Hat Network. Many
people find this to be an easier way to apply updates. To use Red Hat
Network, launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system. Note that you need to select the kernel
explicitly on default configurations of up2date.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 2 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 2 ia64

Fixes

• BZ - 73821 - Linux dmesg reports incorrect date/time on CMC errors
• BZ - 74407 - Kernel panic running disk&CDROM stress + network tests
• BZ - 78624 - Errata candidate kernel Oops on Wilson Peak (workstation)
• BZ - 79169 - IA32 exception handler: restore of instruction and data pointers
• BZ - 79407 - Shutting off altstacks -> segfault in existing signal handlers

CVEs

• CVE-2003-0018

References

(none)