Does the ekeyd daemon start the ekey-ulusbd daemon?

[Paul Martin]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 08:14:52AM -0700, Garey Mills wrote:

>     I have a couple of questions. First, what is the most recent
> update of RHEL5?

The problem with the cdc-acm module existed in the Linus 2.6.18
kernel, but RedHat have backported the fix to their own version.

What would happen is that the whole system could lock solid and become
unresponsive, or sometimes that would result in a kernel panic.
RedHat has backported the fix to their own kernel.

Their kernel changelogs suggest that to be the case for 2.6.18-308.1.1
and later:

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2012-0361.html

"The Abstract Control Model (ACM) driver uses spinlocks to protect the
lists of USB Request Blocks (URBs) and read buffers maintained by the
driver. Previously, when a USB device used the ACM interface, a race
condition between scheduled ACM tasklets could occur. Consequently,
the system could enter a deadlock situation because tasklets could
take spinlocks without disabling interrupt requests (IRQs). This
situation resulted in various types of soft lockups ending up with a
kernel panic. This update fixes the problem so that IRQs are disabled
when a spinlock is taken. Deadlocks no longer occur and the kernel no
longer crashes in this scenario. (BZ#790778)"

The latest kernel is described and can be downloaded from here:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-1174.html

If you are not getting automatic updates from Red Hat, you are very
likely going to be suffering from unpatched system vulnerabilities.


>     Third, if the ekey-lusbd does come up automatically, will it
> still come up in the most recent update of RHEL5? And if so, do I
> have to uninstall the package to stop it?

You are correct on both counts.

-- 
Paul Martin <pm at simtec.co.uk>
Simtec Electronics         Tel: +44 1772 978010
http://www.simtec.co.uk/   Fax: +44 1772 816426