Hewlett-Packard

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HP  IT RESOURCE CENTER

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Recalled Patch PHKL_24943

 

Dear Christopher McCray,

 

Hewlett-Packard has recalled the following patch:

 

PHKL_24943 : s700_800 11.00 pm cumulative,spinlock,IDS,q3p,prntf,lwp_SS

 

While it may or may not affect you, we highly recommend that you

remove this patch from your system immediately.  Please read the

"Warning Description" below to determine if it is necessary for you to

install a replacement patch.

 

Warning Description:

 

This patch has been removed by the HP-UX Patch

Administrator.

 

- PHKL_22940 introduced behavior that can result in a system

  panic.  Under specific conditions, the thread sleep queue

  could be corrupted.  This could lead to a system panic when

  the system attempts to wake up a sleeping thread that is not

  found in the sleep queue.

- As of this date, this behavior has only been reported by one

  customer.

- This behavior exists in PHKL_22940 and superseding patches

  PHKL_23002, PHKL_23955, PHKL_24752, PHKL_24753, PHKL_24734,

  and PHKL_24943.

- PHKL_23002 introduced behavior that can cause a kernel build

  failure when installed on a system with either the

  HPUXMinSys32 or HPUXMinSys64 Minimal 32-bit/64-bit HP-UX

  Environment installed.  The kernel build will fail with the

  following message:

    cpp: "/usr/conf/space.h.d/core-hpux.h", line 27:

    error 4036: Can't open include file 'sys/spinlock.h'.

- This behavior exists in PHKL_23002 and superseding patches

  PHKL_23955, PHKL_24752, PHKL_24753, PHKL_24734, and

  PHKL_24943.

- The kernel build fails because the

  /usr/conf/space.h.d/core-hpux.h file delivered with the

  patch relies on the ProgSupport.C-INC fileset being present.

  Since this fileset is not present on systems with only the

  HPUXMinSys32 or HPUXMinSys64 environments installed, the

  failure occurs.

- Once the failure occurs, the kernel can be successfully built

  by executing mk_kernel(1M) after modifying line 26 of the

  /usr/conf/space.h.d/core-hpux.h file from:

    #include   /* for MINIMUM_HASH_POOL_LOCKS,

  to:

    #include "../h/spinlock.h"  /* for MINIMUM_HASH_POOL_LOCKS,

- PHKL_23955 introduced behavior that can result in an apparent

  system hang or significant performance degradation on systems

  running Java-based, or potentially other multi-threaded,

  applications.  As of this date, the behavior has only been

  observed with Java-based applications.

- This behavior exists in PHKL_23955 and superseding patches

  PHKL_24752, PHKL_24753, PHKL_24734, and PHKL_24943.

- PHKL_23955 introduced functionality to provide a temporary

  runtime priority boost to certain threads as they wake up.  

  In specific situations, this priority boost can result in the

  thread consuming the majority of the resources of a CPU.  On

  a uniprocessor system, this may appear as a complete system

  hang.  On a multiprocessor system, it may appear as

  significant performance degradation.

- When this behavior occurs, if access to a shell is available

  it may be possible to interrupt or terminate the offending

  process with SIGINT (i.e. kill -2) or SIGKILL (i.e. kill -9).

  If the offending process can be terminated, follow one of the

  recommendations outlined below before retarting the process.

- This behavior can be avoided by manually modifying a kernel

  tunable with adb(1) as root.  These steps should be taken

  with extreme care:

    adb -w -k /stand/vmunix /dev/kmem

    ksleep_prio_boost?D   #display value in kernel,should show 1

    ksleep_prio_boost?W0  #set value to 0 in kernel

    ksleep_prio_boost/D   #display value in memory,should show 1

    ksleep_prio_boost/W0  #set value to 0 in memory

    $q

  This will disable the priority boost feature enabled by

  default with PHKL_23955.  The modification is made in

  memory, so no reboot is required, and also in the kernel,

  so the modification will persist across reboots.  If the

  kernel is rebuilt, these steps will need to be performed

  again once the new kernel is booted.

- To avoid these undesired behaviors, HP recommends that

  PHKL_22940, PHKL_23002, PHKL_23955, PHKL_24752, PHKL_24753,

  PHKL_24734, and PHKL_24943 be removed from all systems on

  which they are installed.  They should also be removed from

  all software depots.

- The superseded patches PHKL_20202, PHKL_22589, PHKL_24502,

  and PHKL_24733 do not exhibit any of these behaviors and are

  being re-released until a replacement patch is available.  If

  you choose to remove these patches, HP recommends that

  PHKL_20202, PHKL_22589, PHKL_24502, and PHKL_24733 be

  installed after the patches are removed to ensure as many

  known issues as possible are addressed.  If PHKL_20202,

  PHKL_22589, PHKL_24502, or PHKL_24733 were installed prior to

  these patches they will automatically be restored when the

  patches are removed and they will not need to be reinstalled.

- If you need to remove multiple patches in succession, it is

  possible to avoid multiple system reboots by issuing the

  following commands as root for each patch to be removed

  (in this example PHKL_22943):

    1. swmodify -a is_reboot=false PHKL_24943.\*

    2. swremove PHKL_24943

  The kernel will be rebuilt during the removal of PHKL_24943,

  but the system will not be rebooted.  While these steps can

  be used to avoid multiple system reboots, it will still be

  necessary to reboot from a new kernel after all the patches

  have been removed, or after the superseded patches are

  installed, to ensure the undesirable behaviors are removed

  from the running kernel.

- HP will release a new patch to address these issues as soon

  as possible.  As of this date, we do not have an anticipated

  release date for the new patch.  

 

If you have any questions, please contact the HP Response Center.

 

Thank you -