The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linux operating system. * A flaw was found in the way the Linux kernel"s splice system call validated its parameters. On certain file systems, a local, unprivileged user could use this flaw to write past the maximum file size, and thus crash the system. Red Hat would like to thank Akira Fujita of NEC for reporting this issue. This update also fixes the following bugs: * Previously, hot-unplugging of a virtio-blk device could in some cases lead to a kernel panic, for example during in-flight I/O requests. This update fixes race condition in the hot-unplug code in the virtio_blk.ko module. As a result, hot unplugging of the virtio-blk device no longer causes the guest kernel oops when there are in-flight I/O requests. * Before this update, due to a bug in the error-handling path, a corrupted metadata block could be used as a valid block. With this update, the error handling path has been fixed and more checks have been added to verify the metadata block. Now, when a corrupted metadata block is encountered, it is properly marked as corrupted and handled accordingly. * Previously, an incorrectly initialized variable resulted in a random value being stored in the variable that holds the number of default ACLs, and is sent in the SET_PATH_INFO data structure. Consequently, the setfacl command could, under certain circumstances, fail with an "Invalid argument" error. With this update, the variable is correctly initialized to zero, thus fixing the bug. All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must be rebooted for this update to take effect.