| Description: | The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linuxoperating system.* An out-of-bounds memory access flaw was found in the Linux kernel'ssystem call auditing implementation. On a system with existing audit rulesdefined, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to leak kernelmemory to user space or, potentially, crash the system. (CVE-2014-3917,Moderate)This update also fixes the following bugs:* A bug in the journaling code (jbd and jbd2) could, under very heavyworkload of fsync() operations, trigger a BUG_ON and result in a kerneloops. Also, fdatasync() could fail to immediately write out changes in thefile size only. These problems have been resolved by backporting a seriesof patches that fixed these problems in the respective code on Red HatEnterprise Linux 6. This update also improves performance of ext3 and ext4file systems. (BZ#1116027)* Due to a bug in the ext4 code, the fdatasync() system call did not forcethe inode size change to be written to the disk if it was the only metadatachange in the file. This could result in the wrong inode size and possibledata loss if the system terminated unexpectedly. The code handling inodeupdates has been fixed and fdatasync() now writes data to the disk asexpected in this situation. (BZ#1117665)* A workaround to a DMA read problem in the tg3 driver was incorrectlyapplied to the whole Broadcom 5719 and 5720 chipset family. This workaroundis valid only to the A0 revision of the 5719 chips and for other revisionsand chips causes occasional Tx timeouts. This update correctly applies theaforementioned workaround only to the A0 revision of the 5719 chips.(BZ#1121017)* Due to a bug in the page writeback code, the system could becomeunresponsive when being under memory pressure and heavy NFS load. Thisupdate fixes the code responsible for handling of dirty pages, and dirtypage write outs no longer flood the work queue. (BZ#1125246)All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, whichcontain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must berebooted for this update to take effect. |