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4.182. systemtap

Updated systemtap packages that fix multiple bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
SystemTap is a tracing and probing tool to analyze and monitor activities of the operating system, including the kernel. It provides a wide range of filtering and analysis options.

Note

The systemtap packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.8, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#751479)

Bug Fix

BZ#843392
Prior to this update, updating the systemtap package on client machines could fail because the systemap-testsuite is not designed for these machines. To work around this problem, remove the systemtap-testsuite subpackage before upgrading the systemtap package on client machines.
All users of systemtap are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.
Updated systemtap packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) associated with each description below.
SystemTap is an instrumentation system for systems running the Linux kernel. The system allows developers to write scripts to collect data on the operation of the system.

Security Fix

CVE-2012-0875
An invalid pointer read flaw was found in the way SystemTap handled malformed debugging information in DWARF format. When SystemTap unprivileged mode was enabled, an unprivileged user in the stapusr group could use this flaw to crash the system or, potentially, read arbitrary kernel memory. Additionally, a privileged user (root, or a member of the stapdev group) could trigger this flaw when tricked into instrumenting a specially-crafted ELF binary, even when unprivileged mode was not enabled.
SystemTap users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue.