Odd problem with lsm-full-2001_12_10 on RH 7.2

Odd problem with lsm-full-2001_12_10 on RH 7.2

[Justin Smith]

This is an intermittent problem corrected (temporarily) by rebooting.
I don't know whether it is related to SELinux or just to the 2.4.16
kernel (or something else entirely). 

When I try to perform certain tasks (like edit the crontab), I get the
message

bash: /usr/bin/crontab: Cannot allocate memory



dmesg does not have any additional information (such as access denied
messages) --- it is blank.  I'm not even sure what the 'Cannot allocate
memory' message means since my machine has more than 300 meg of RAM, a
gigabyte of swap, and not all of the RAM is ever utilized.

Although crontab -e doesn't work, vi does (even though the crontab
program is attempting to use vi to edit the table).Several other system
functions (like installing software using rpm) also fail with the same
message.

Any ideas?
-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Time blows wildly against my door       | Justin R. Smith
Stirring discarded sorrows      	| Department of Mathematics and
Like dead leaves of summers past        |     Computer Science
Memories of forgotten lore          	| Drexel University
Making way for new tomorrows         	| Philadelphia, PA 19104
New hopes, new fears,                   |
         and new ways that last         | Office: (215) 895-1847
URL: http://vorpal.mcs.drexel.edu       | Fax:    (215) 895-1582



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Re: Odd problem with lsm-full-2001_12_10 on RH 7.2

[Stephen Smalley]

On 9 Jan 2002, Justin Smith wrote:

> This is an intermittent problem corrected (temporarily) by rebooting.
> I don't know whether it is related to SELinux or just to the 2.4.16
> kernel (or something else entirely).
>
> When I try to perform certain tasks (like edit the crontab), I get the
> message
>
> bash: /usr/bin/crontab: Cannot allocate memory

This sounds similar to a problem with 2.4.16 reported in the following
message on the linux-kernel mailing list:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100782613611428&w=2

This problem was tracked down as being due to a problem in the ntfs code,
and when ntfs was disabled, the error no longer occurred.  Are you using
ntfs?  If so, try disabling it.

If not, the only known bug in the last public release of SELinux that
might produce this behavior was fixed by the patch in the following
message:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=selinux&m=100861319315772&w=2

If that doesn't help, you might try the 2.4.17 LSM kernel from
lsm.immunix.org to see if that helps.  But be warned, some people have
reported filesystem corruption problems with 2.4.17, although I haven't
seen it myself on our test machines.

--
Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
ssmalley@nai.com





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Re: Odd problem with lsm-full-2001_12_10 on RH 7.2

[Stephen Smalley]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Stephen Smalley wrote:

> This problem was tracked down as being due to a problem in the ntfs code,
> and when ntfs was disabled, the error no longer occurred.  Are you using
> ntfs?  If so, try disabling it.

Actually, I see that this problem can also be caused by modify_ldt.  So
in addition to not using ntfs, try the patch posted at:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100827770130527&w=2

--
Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
ssmalley@nai.com




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