Microcode_Ctl; Rhea-2009:1363: Enhancement Update - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5.4 - TECHNICAL NOTES Manual

Chapter 1. Package Updates
• mdadm did not recognize the "-N" and "-Y" short options, although it recognized their long
equivalents ("--name" and "--export") and they were listed as valid in mdadm --help. Mdadm now
recognizes these short options.
• a new raid-check script (see the enhancement note below) attempted to check arrays that were
not checkable. The script first retrieved a list of active arrays from /proc/mdstat then attempted to
write "check" to the sync_action element of each array's sysfs entry. Non-redundant arrays (such as
linear and raid0 arrays) do not have a sync_action entry in sysfs, however. Note: this did not prevent
the script from checking arrays that could be checked but did cause cron job output errors to be e-
mailed to the system administrator. The raid-check script now checks for a sync_action element in
sysfs before writing to it.
This update also adds the following enhancement:
• with this update mdadm has new functionality to enable "data scrubbing" on redundant arrays. Data
scrubbing looks for bad sectors on drives in redundant arrays and fixes the bad sectors using data
from other drives to reconstruct sectors that return read errors. Note: data scrubbing is on by default
in this new package. It runs once per week and may cause some performance degradation while
it is running. If users wish to disable this feature for performance reasons, or if they wish to control
what type of check is performed on arrays, or which arrays to check at all, edit the file /etc/sysconfig/
raid-check. Details of how to set options are included in the file as comments.
This package also updates the upstream source base from mdadm-2.6.4 to mdadm-2.6.9. For a list of
the changes and bug fixes included via this upstream update, please read the various ANNOUNCE-*
files located in /usr/share/doc/mdadm-2.6.9 after installing the updated mdadm-2.6.9 package.
All mdadm users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these issues and
adds this feature.

1.141. microcode_ctl

1.141.1. RHEA-2009:1363: enhancement update

An updated module-init-tools package that adds an enhancement is now available.
microcode_ctl is a kernel-related package that provides utility code and the microcode data itself -
supplied by Intel - to assist the kernel in updating the CPU microcode at system boot time.
This updated microcode_ctl includes the latest 20090330 version of the Intel-supplied microcode
data. This microcode corrects the behavior of various Intel processors, as described in processor
specification updates issued by Intel for those processors.
Users are advised to upgrade to this updated microcode_ctl package, which adds this enhancements.
1211
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=463445
166
1208
(BZ#478977
1209
(BZ#513473 )
)
1211
(BZ#463445
1210
(BZ#513200 )
)