xguest installation failed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Issue

  • The following error is output on installing xguest package.
Error in PREIN scriptlet in rpm package xguest-1.0.9-2.el6.noarch
error: %pre(xguest-1.0.9-2.el6.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping xguest-1.0.9-2.el6
  • This doesn't occur in many other systems.

Resolution

  • Find the module using much vmalloc memory and remove it.

Root Cause

  • Selinux module is placed in vmalloc'ed memory area in kernel. When the system does not have enough vmalloc memory, it can fail with no memory.

Diagnostic Steps

3997  01:48:36.393904 execve("/sbin/load_policy", ["/sbin/load_policy"], [/* 0 vars */]) = 0 
... snip ...
3997  01:48:36.412245 open("/etc/selinux/targeted/policy/policy.24", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3 <0.000082>
3997  01:48:36.412366 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=6337067, ...}) = 0 <0.000011>
3997  01:48:36.412432 mmap2(NULL, 6337067, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb7156000 <0.000014>
3997  01:48:36.412475 open("/selinux/load", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) = 4 <0.000013>
3997  01:48:36.412521 write(4, "\214\377|\371\10\0\0\0SE Linux\30\0\0\0\5\0\0\0\10\0\0\0\7\0\0\0"..., 6337067) = -1 ENOMEM (Cannot allocate memory) <0.000102>
3997  01:48:36.412677 close(4)          = 0 <0.000010>
3997  01:48:36.412728 write(2, "SELinux:  Could not load policy "..., 101) = 101 <0.000017>
  • Writing into /selinux/load on a execution of "/sbin/load_policy" returned -ENOMEM.
  • The write hander in kernel for /selinux/load is sel_write_load().
static ssize_t sel_write_load(struct file *file, const char __user *buf,
                              size_t count, loff_t *ppos)

{
...
        if ((count > 64 * 1024 * 1024)
            || (data = vmalloc(count)) == NULL) {
                length = -ENOMEM;       <<====================
                goto out;
        }
  • Count should be a size of file policy.24 and, from sosreport:
 VmallocTotal:     122880 kB
 VmallocUsed:      101840 kB
 VmallocChunk:       5076 kB
  • There is no enough memory for vmalloc.
# grep nouv vmallocinfo
0xf8480000-0xf8c81000 8392704 nouveau_load+0x88/0x900 [nouveau] phys=f0000000 ioremap
0xf8d00000-0xfcd01000 67112960 nouveau_load+0x4fe/0x900 [nouveau] phys=d0000000 ioremap
0xfcef6000-0xfcef8000    8192 nv50_evo_channel_new+0x141/0x220 [nouveau] phys=f0640000 ioremap
0xfcefe000-0xfcf00000    8192 nv50_evo_channel_new+0x141/0x220 [nouveau] phys=f0641000 ioremap
0xfcf0a000-0xfcf0c000    8192 nv50_evo_channel_new+0x141/0x220 [nouveau] phys=f0642000 ioremap

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