Re: linux 3.4.43 : kernel crash at __nf_conntrack_confirm

["Neal P. Murphy" <neal.p.murphy@alum.wpi.edu>]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:26:35 -0700
Ani Sinha <ani@arista.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de> wrote:
> > Ani Sinha <ani@arista.com> wrote:
> >> >> > commit c6825c0976fa7893692e0e43b09740b419b23c09
> >> >> > Author: Andrey Vagin <avagin@openvz.org>
> >> >> > Date:   Wed Jan 29 19:34:14 2014 +0100
> >> >> >      netfilter: nf_conntrack: fix RCU race in nf_conntrack_find_get
> >> >> >
> >> >> > and a followup patch :
> >> >> >
> >> >> > commit e53376bef2cd97d3e3f61fdc677fb8da7d03d0da
> >> >> > Author: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>
> >> >> > Date:   Mon Feb 3 20:01:53 2014 +0100
> >> >> >         netfilter: nf_conntrack: don't release a conntrack with non-zero refcnt
> >> >> >
> >> >
> >> > These for instance fix such bugs.
> >>
> >> So since both these patches were not backported to 3.4 series and
> >> since now we have evidence of a crash that points to issues which the
> >> patches fix, should we consider backporting the above patches to 3.4?
> >
> > Yes.
> 
> Ok cool. I will send out backport patches for 3.4 corresponding to
> both the above patches.

As an FYI, Zefan Li just released 3.4.110; I didn't see the fix in the list. No surprise, of course; it does take more than 12 hours to get patches right, as I am painfully aware.

I just bumped Smoothwall Express to 3.4.109 in Update4, and 3.4.110 contains fixes that relate to Smoothwall. May I safely assume that these patches will apply easily to 3.4.110? The obvious answer is, "Yes," but I'd like a bit of reassurance (<pat> <pat> "There, there; it'll be fine. The patches will be OK.") before I prepare and release the next update.

Neal