kernel bug fix update

Updated kernel packages that fix various bugs are now available.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux
operating system.

These updated packages fix the following bugs:

* a bug in the kernel NFS code significantly reduced the speed of file
operations when dealing with symbolic links. An extra GETATTR operation has
been removed, which resolves this issue.

* a bug in the kernel CIFS code may have resulted in corrupted memory. The
cifs_demultiplex_thread did not handle all of the error codes from the
kernel_recvmsg function, which may have caused any pointer at an address
above the kvec to be a candidate for corruption. This has been resolved in
these updated packages.

* using memory interleaving or the "numa=off" kernel boot argument caused
a kernel panic on HP Proliant DL585 systems which used an AMD K8 family
CPU, and the largesmp kernel.

* a flaw was found in the kernel signals handling code. A race condition
in the use of recalc_sigpending_tsk could lead to kernel-only system call
error codes being returned to user-space.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 users are advised to upgrade to these updated
packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues.

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

360051 - extra GETATTR calls against symlinks in RHEL4
368411 - x86_64 largesmp kernel panics at boot time on DL585
381161 - [RHEL 4.4] task->mm or slab corruption with CIFS
381171 - select() occasionally returns errno 514

http://kbase.redhat.com/
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_42_11697.shtm