Bug 446771

Summary: pygrub uses OS cached data
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Kostas Georgiou <k.georgiou>
Component: xenAssignee: Xen Maintainance List <xen-maint>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 8CC: a.rogge, berrange
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-01-09 06:30:53 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 466895    

Description Kostas Georgiou 2008-05-15 22:38:01 UTC
After I upgraded to the latest kernel and rebooted my pv f9 install pugrub only
showed me the old grub.conf file.
A few dozen reboots later, reading the pygrub code several times without any
luck I tried vm.drop_caches=1 which solved the problem.

I am accessing a full disk directly from xen which I suspect is the cause with: 
disk = [ 'phy:/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_6B200M0_XXXXXXX,xvda,w', ]

Using O_DIRECT in pygrub is probably the right solution but a quick test showed
that it fails in 'fs = fsimage.open(file, get_fs_offset(file))' I guess because
fsimage doesn't align it's reads on 512 byte boundaries :(

Comment 1 Andreas Rogge 2008-10-12 00:26:23 UTC
This also happes on RHEL 5.2.
I was hit on that issue while migrating some machines into VMs.

Because of the following scenario this bug is actually security relevant:
When you install a new kernel (which probably fixes a security issue) and reboot the system it will eventually boot with the old (and vulnerable) kernel.
Especially when installing a new system and you immediately apply the patches after the install is finished, you're likely to trigger this behavior.

It gets even worse in a clustered environment when you're running on plain volumes (i.e. LVs from a clustered VG). Usually the host-nodes have incoherent caches for these volumes which might lead to a vm booting kernel A when started on node1 and kernel B when started on node2.

Comment 2 Bug Zapper 2008-11-26 10:42:58 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 8 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 8.  It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained.  At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '8'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 8's end of life.

Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that 
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 8 is end of life.  If you 
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Comment 3 Bug Zapper 2009-01-09 06:30:53 UTC
Fedora 8 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-01-07. Fedora 8 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.