RHSA-2009:1670: Important: kernel security and bug fix update

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linuxoperating system.Security fixes: NULL pointer dereference flaws in the r128 driver. Checks to test if the Concurrent Command Engine state was initialized were missing in privateIOCTL functions. An attacker could use these flaws to cause a local denialof service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2009-3620, Important) a NULL pointer dereference flaw in the NFSv4 implementation. Several NFSv4 file locking functions failed to check whether a file had been openedon the server before performing locking operations on it. A local user on asystem with an NFSv4 share mounted could possibly use this flaw to cause adenial of service or escalate their privileges. (CVE-2009-3726, Important) a flaw in tcffillnode(). A certain data structure in this function was not initialized properly before being copied to user-space. This could leadto an information leak. (CVE-2009-3612, Moderate) unixstreamconnect() did not check if a UNIX domain socket was in the shutdown state. This could lead to a deadlock. A local, unprivileged usercould use this flaw to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2009-3621, Moderate)Knowledgebase DOC-20536 has steps to mitigate NULL pointer dereferenceflaws.Bug fixes: frequently changing a CPU between online and offline caused a kernel panic on some systems. (BZ#545583) for the LSI Logic LSI53C1030 Ultra320 SCSI controller, read commands sent could receive incorrect data, preventing correct data transfer. (BZ#529308) pciehp could not detect PCI Express hot plug slots on some systems. (BZ#530383) soft lockups: inotify race and contention on dcachelock. (BZ#533822, BZ#537019) priority ordered lists are now used for threads waiting for a given mutex. (BZ#533858) a deadlock in DLM could cause GFS2 file systems to lock up. (BZ#533859) use-after-free bug in the audit subsystem crashed certain systems when running usermod. (BZ#533861) on certain hardware configurations, a kernel panic when the Broadcom iSCSI offload driver (bnx2i.ko and cnic.ko) was loaded. (BZ#537014) qla2xxx: Enabled MSI-X, and correctly handle the module parameter to control it. This improves performance for certain systems. (BZ#537020) system crash when reading the cpuaffinity file on a system. (BZ#537346) suspend-resume problems on systems with lots of logical CPUs, e.g. BX-EX. (BZ#539674) off-by-one error in the legacy PCI bus check. (BZ#539675) TSC was not made available on systems with multi-clustered APICs. This could cause slow performance for time-sensitive applications. (BZ#539676) ACPI: ARBDISABLE now disabled on platforms that do not need it. (BZ#539677) fix node to core and power-aware scheduling issues, and a kernel panic during boot on certain AMD Opteron processors. (BZ#539678, BZ#540469,BZ#539680, BZ#539682) APIC timer interrupt issues on some AMD Opteron systems prevented achieving full power savings. (BZ#539681) general OProfile support for some newer Intel processors. (BZ#539683) system crash during boot when NUMA is enabled on systems using MC and kernel-xen. (BZ#539684) on some larger systems, performance issues due to a spinlock. (BZ#539685) APIC errors when IOMMU is enabled on some AMD Opteron systems. (BZ#539687) on some AMD Opteron systems, repeatedly taking a CPU offline then online caused a system hang. (BZ#539688) I/O page fault errors on some systems. (BZ#539689) certain memory configurations could cause the kernel-xen kernel to fail to boot on some AMD Opteron systems. (BZ#539690) NMI watchdog is now disabled for offline CPUs. (BZ#539691) duplicate directories in /proc/acpi/processor/ on BX-EX systems. (BZ#539692) links did not come up when using bnx2x with certain Broadcom devices. (BZ#540381)Users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backportedpatches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for thisupdate to take effect.