Linus Torvalds: 'Uhhuh.. 2.4.12'

Oct 11, 2001, 08:33 (16 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Linus Torvalds)

Please use one of the many kernel.org mirrors.

Date:   Thu, 11 Oct 2001 01:04:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
To: Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Uhhuh.. 2.4.12

2.4.11 had a fix for a symlink DoS attack, but sadly that fix broke the
creation of files through a dangling symlink rather badly (it caused the
inode to be created in the very same inode as the symlink, with unhappy
end results).

Happily nobody uses that particular horror - or _almost_ nobody does. It
looks like at least the SuSE installer (yast2) does, which causes a nasty
unkillable inode as /dev/mouse if you use yast2 on 2.4.11.

("debugfs -w rootdev" + "rm /dev/mouse" will remove it, although I suspect
there are other less drastic methods too if your fsck doesn't seem to
notice anything wrong with it. Only one report of this actually happening
so far).

So I made a 2.4.12, and renamed away the sorry excuse for a kernel that
2.4.11 was.

                Linus

-----
final:
 - Greg KH: USB update (fix UHCI timeouts, serial unplug)
 - Christoph Rohland: shmem locking fixes
 - Al Viro: more mount cleanup
 - me: fix bad interaction with link_count handling
 - David Miller: Sparc updates, net cleanup
 - Tim Waugh: parport update
 - Jeff Garzik: net driver updates

and in a followup message:

To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
From: torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)
Subject: Re: Uhhuh.. 2.4.12
Date:   Thu, 11 Oct 2001 08:30:52 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Transmeta Corporation

In article <Pine.LNX.4.33.0110110058550.1198-100000@penguin.transmeta.com>,
Linus Torvalds  <torvalds@transmeta.com> wrote:
>
>So I made a 2.4.12, and renamed away the sorry excuse for a kernel that
>2.4.11 was.
>
> - Tim Waugh: parport update

.. which is broken.

Not a good week.

On the other hand, the good news is that I'll open 2.5.x RSN, just
because Alan is so much better at maintaining things ;)

                Linus