RHBA-2009:0173 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated coreutils package that fixes several bugs is now available.

Description

The coreutils package contains the core GNU utilities. It is the
combination of the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

This updated package fixes the following bugs:

• the install utility -- usr/bin/install -- did not set permissions

properly on a directory if that directory already existed. With this
update, permissions changes work correctly.

• the coreutils "pwd" command failed to traverse the current working

directory if any of its parent directories did not have read permissions.
In this updated package, the corutils "pwd" command works correctly. Note:
this error was only present in the coreutils "pwd" command, /bin/pwd. It
did not present when using a shell's built-in "pwd" command.

• the coreutils documentation did not include information about the

preservation of DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY environmental variables for the
pam_xauth module when using the "su -l" command. This behavior is now
documented.

• DTR/DSR control flow support was added to the "stty" command. Note: this

support requires kernel-2.6.18-110.el5 or later.

• the "/bin/ls" command failed with a "memory exhausted" error on

directories containing more than six million (6,000,000) files. With this
updated package, "bin/ls -f" (which outputs an unsorted, one-line-per-file
listing) uses a constant amount of memory per directory, regardless of the
number of files present. This allows the command to parse the directory
without failing.

Note: it was possible to reproduce this error with fewer than six million
files in a directory if available memory was deliberately constrained. The
amount of memory constraint needed to reproduce this error, however, is
architecture dependent.

• the "runuser" and "su" man pages and help messages contained a

mis-spelled word: commmand. This update includes man pages and help
messages with the typo corrected to "command".

• unnecessary "unrecognized keyword" error messages generated by the

colorls.sh shell script are now discarded rather than returned.

• various man pages were patched with text other than the output of

"--help". This led to possible replacement of the patched texts when
rebuilding sources. With this update, all man pages are generated at
build-time and are, as a consequence, more reliable and synchronized with
"--help" output.

• installing the "everything" tree resulted in an error in the log file:

"find: command not found". This log message is harmless. The find command
noted in the log fixes troubles with the (now old) glibc 2.2. With this
update, however, the findutils package (which supplies the find command
noted above) is installed if the "everything" tree is used for coreutils
installation.

All coreutils users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 445213 - [RFE] DTR/DSR flow control
• BZ - 448446 - Update coreutils to address /bin/pwd directory traversal issue
• BZ - 450506 - Typo in runuser and su man pages and help messages
• BZ - 450508 - should discard errors from dircolors
• BZ - 467858 - Error installing coreutils: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.73408: line 4: find: command not found

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)