[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD Errata Notice FreeBSD-EN-09:03.fxp

[FreeBSD Errata Notices]

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FreeBSD-EN-09:03.fxp						Errata Notice
							  The FreeBSD Project

Topic:		Poor TCP performance of fxp(4)

Category:	core
Module:		sys/dev
Announced:	2009-06-24
Credits:	Bjoern Koenig <bkoenig at alpha-tierchen.de>
		Pyun YongHyeon <yongari at FreeBSD.org>
Affects:	FreeBSD 7.2
Corrected:	2009-05-07 01:14:59 (RELENG_7, 7.2-STABLE)
		2009-06-24 05:28:09 (RELENG_7_2, 7.2-RELEASE-p3)

For general information regarding FreeBSD Errata Notices and Security
Advisories, including descriptions of the fields above, security
branches, and the following sections, please visit
<URL:http://security.freebsd.org/>.

I.	Background

fxp(4) is a network device driver which provides support for Ethernet
adapters based on the Intel i82557, i82558, i82559, i82550, and i82562
chips.  It supports TCP segmentation offload (TSO) for IPv4 on i82550
and i82551.

II.	Problem Description

When a TSO option is enabled, fxp(4) always sets the length of outgoing IP
packets as the interface MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit).  This could
could cause the packet to be lost when the TCP receiver advertises a smaller
MSS (Maximum Segment Size) than the interface MTU on the sender side.

III.	Impact

TCP connections via fxp(4) can cause significantly poor performance
when the TSO option is enabled due to packet loss.  Note that the loss
depends on the receiver side's MSS.

IV.	Workaround

Disable TSO of fxp(4) interfaces on your system.  There are two ways
to do this:

 (disable TSO of a specific interface; "fxp0" in the below example)
 # ifconfig fxp0 -tso

 (disable TSO of all interfaces on the system)
 # sysctl net.inet.tcp.tso=0

V.	Solution

Perform one of the following:

1) Upgrade your vulnerable system to 7-STABLE or to the RELENG_7_2
   security branch dated after the correction date.

2) To patch your present system:

The following patches have been verified to apply to FreeBSD 7.2 system.

a) Download the relevant patch from the location below, and verify the
   detached PGP signature using your PGP utility.

# fetch http://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/EN-09:03/fxp.patch
# fetch http://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/EN-09:03/fxp.patch.asc

b) Apply the patch.

# cd /usr/src
# patch < /path/to/patch

c) Recompile your kernel as described in
   <URL:http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/kernelconfig.html> and reboot
   the system.

VI.	Correction details

The following list contains the revision numbers of each file that was
corrected in FreeBSD.

CVS:

Branch								 Revision
  Path
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
RELENG_7
  src/sys/dev/fxp/if_fxp.c				       1.266.2.15
RELENG_7_2
  src/UPDATING                                             1.507.2.23.2.5
  src/sys/conf/newvers.sh                                   1.72.2.11.2.6
  src/sys/dev/fxp/if_fxp.c                                 1.266.2.14.2.2
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subversion:

Branch/path                                                      Revision
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
stable/7/                                                         r191867
releng/7.2/                                                       r194808
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

VII.	References

The latest revision of this advisory is available at
http://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-EN-09:03.fxp.asc
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