AIX system crashes and dump analysis points to sisfim driver and sym_vnode* function is invoked.

Products

• Data Center Security Server
• Data Center Security Server Advanced

Issue/Introduction

Agent Version: Data Center Security (DCS) 6.8 Agent version 6.8.2.756 or lower

AIX system crashes and dump analysis points to sisfim driver and sym_vnode* function is invoked.


Crash Dump:
pvthread+86C100 STACK:
[00023900]abend_trap+000000 ()
[005F062C]sunlock+0001AC (??, ??)
[00009980].simple_unlock_mem+000068 ()
[060A3134]sym_lrucache_get+000094 (??, ??)
[060A29AC]sym_vnode_cache_get+00002C (F100010382E3E020)
[060A610C]getFilePath+00024C (??, ??, ??)
[060A5CB8]getFullPath+000038 (??, ??, ??, ??)
[060A6938]getPathComponents+0003F8 (??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??)
[060A7F2C]svcNameCheck+0002EC (??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??)
[060AB3DC]kopen+0000DC (??, ??, ??)
[00003954]syscall+00024C ()
[kdb_get_virtual_memory] no real storage @ 1002466E530
[9000000000324F8]09000000000324F8 ()
[kdb_read_mem] no real storage @ FFFFFFFFFFF6050
The spinlock which was used for serializing VNode caching requests was not initialized properly.

Environment

Data Center Security (DCS) 6.8.2.756 or older Agent
AIX

Resolution

Apply DCS 6.8.2.829+ agent hotfix provided by Broadcom on AIX hosts or upgrade to the DCS 6.9.0 Agent.

This hotfix fixes the crash by improving the spinlock initialization. Additionally this hotfix gives functionality to disable VNode caching at runtime. By default it is enabled on system boot up.