[Mageia-dev] NVIDIA CVE, mga1: update driver, or patch and break CUDA debugger?

Anssi Hannula anssi at mageia.org
Thu Apr 12 21:19:45 CEST 2012


11.04.2012 18:29, Anssi Hannula kirjoitti:
> 11.04.2012 17:47, Pascal Terjan kirjoitti:
>> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 15:27, Anssi Hannula <anssi at mageia.org> wrote:
>>> Hi all!
>>>
>>> We'll have to apply a patch for CVE-2012-0946 (access to arbitrary
>>> system memory by any user) for cauldron and mga1.
>>>
>>> However, the security fix (patch to the nvidia kernel interface layer)
>>> will break CUDA debugger using libcuda older than 295.40.
>>>
>>> While I can upgrade cauldron driver (which contains libcuda) to 295.40,
>>> mga1 will be left with two options:
>>> a) Apply patch, informing users that CUDA debugger will cease to
>>>   function unless they upgrade their NVIDIA driver. However, as we have
>>>   no backports, the remaining (non-system-breaking) option to upgrade
>>>   their driver is to use http://onse.fi/nvidia-mgabuild/ , but I don't
>>>   think it is very nice to link to non-official page from an advisory,
>>>   right?
>>>
>>> b) Upgrade our MGA1 driver from 275.09.07 to 295.40 ("long-lived branch
>>>   release") as well. We have
>>>   previously shipped an update from 270.41.19 to 275.09.07 for MGA1
>>>   (that was due to an important stability bugfix). I'm not aware of
>>>   any blockers for this.
>>
>> I would vote for b provided more research about known regressions from
>> 275 to 295 (like dropping support for some devices)
>>
> 
> No device have been dropped support for there.
> 
> And if there were any big regressions, one'd think we would've heard of
> them in cauldron.
> 
> Hmm.. Actually, there is at least one regression: When in XBMC one has
> enabled "sync playback to display", XBMC will try to spawn a
> nvidia-settings instance to detect the refresh rate - however with
> 295.20+ the forked process will simply block on a mutex. This is handled
> gracefully and XBMC fallbacks to using RANDR, however that only works
> for integer refresh rates (and when twinview isn't enabled; we default
> to disabled), otherwise playback won't be synced properly (AFAIU)....
> 
> Argh, checking more, the older XBMC 10.1 we have on mga1 apparently
> won't handle this gracefully, but will just get stuck. I guess we could
> patch it, but the feature wouldn't still work properly for non-integer
> rates...
> 
> This is reported as
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=177596

So I think I'll go with option (a). I guess I can attach a current
version of the nvidia-mgabuild.sh script to the bugreport and then refer
users to it?

-- 
Anssi Hannula


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