it affects kernel 2.6 up to 2.6.36 In several places, an epoll fd can call another file's ->f_op->poll() method with ep->mtx held. This is in general unsafe, because that other file could itself be an epoll fd that contains the original epoll fd. The code defends against this possibility in its own ->poll() method using ep_call_nested, but there are several other unsafe calls to ->poll elsewhere that can be made to deadlock. link to git-kernel diff: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=22bacca48a1755f79b7e0f192ddb9fbb7fc6e64e
There are no longer any 2.x kernels available in the repository with the exception of sys-kernel/xbox-sources which is unsupported by security.
