RHBA-2009:0227 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated yum-utils packages that update yum-utils to version 1.1.16
and resolve several issues are now available.

Description

Yum-utils are packages that complement yum. Yum is a utility that can check
for and automatically download and install updated RPM packages and their
dependencies.

This package has been rebased to version 1.1.16 from upstream and provides
fixes for the following bugs:

• yum-complete-transaction would fail while completing a transaction that

had been interrupted. Packages would be installed, updated, or removed as
requested, but yum-complete-transaction would not clean up the completed
transaction file. This package includes a patch that corrects this problem.

• The "yum --bz" command would fail before retrieving any updates and would

exit with a Python traceback. This package includes a patch that corrects
this problem and "yum --bz" now retrieves packages associated with specific
Bugzilla numbers.

• If "yum changelog" or "yum update <package> --changelog" was run without

the Python dateutils module available, yum-changelog would exit with a
Python traceback. This package includes a patch which causes yum-changelog
to fail gracefully.

• yum-fastestmirror was not previously available in Red Hat Enterprise

Linux 5. While this did not affect users obtaining packages solely from
RHN, the ability to use the fastest mirror is beneficial to users wanting
packages from other sources. Rebasing yum-utils to upstream version 1.1.16
provided this plugin.

• Yum would attempt to install incomplete packages left over from downloads

in yum that had been canceled. This was due to a bug in the
yum-downloadonly component. A fix has been imported from upstream and yum
will not attempt to install these packages.

• The "repodiff" command would fail to show differences between specified

repositories. This was due to repodiff failing to clear old data and would
therefore compare a repository with itself. A fix was imported from
upstream that clears old data so that the command works correctly.

• Yum-security would fail to identify packages that had security errata

released if newer non-security errata had been released for those packages.
A patch is included in this update so that "yum update --security" will
update packages to their latest versions if security errata have been
released for those packages and "yum update-minimal --security" will update
packages only with any security-related errata that have been released for
those packages.

• comps files can be used to define groups of packages on which yum will

perform transactions. Previously, yum-utils provided no automated tool for
the creation of these groups. This update includes a new application,
yum-groups-manager, which makes it simple for a user to define groups of
packages. The "-- dependencies" option adds the dependencies of packages to
a group, allowing the user to update the package and all its dependencies
together.

• The versionlock plugin is intended to prevent packages included in the

versionlock.list from being updated by yum. Previously, versionlock failed
to prevent the obsoleted packages from being replaced. A fix has been
introduced from upstream that provides the "follow_obsoletes" that allows
users to specify whether versionlock should also protect obsoleted packages.

• The "repoquery" command would respond with out-of-date, cached

information that did not reflect changes in the repository. This occurred
because repoquery would not empty its cache of saved data. A patch has been
included to correct this and the "repoquery --clean" command now clears
cached data before querying a repository.

• The "--translated-name" and "--translated-description" options in

yum-utils would fail with a Python traceback if the name or description
included a non-ASCII character. This package provides a patch from upstream
which allows for unicode characters in the name or description so that
languages other than English can now be represented correctly.

All users of yum-utils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages,
which resolve 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 - 444948 - repodiff doesn't delete old data in the repos. it creates
• BZ - 449989 - yum-versionlock doesn't work against package obsoletes?
• BZ - 454883 - Rebase to upstream 1.1.16
• BZ - 458131 - RFE: include yum-fastestmirror plugin.
• BZ - 462374 - yum-security --bz option broken in current 5.3 errata candidate
• BZ - 462797 - yum-downloadonly doesn't show errors for downloaded packages
• BZ - 470776 - yum-complete-transaction doesn't cleanup with new yum
• BZ - 472389 - yum changelog doesn't exit properly when dateutil module isn't present

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)