RHBA-2009:0994 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An enhanced sos package that fixes various bugs and provides an enhancement
is now available.

Description

SOS is a set of tools that gathers information about a system's hardware
and current configuration. The information can then be used for diagnostic
purposes and debugging.

This update synchronizes the SOS codebase with that shipped with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 ensuring the tool provides the same diagnostic and
debugging capabilities across versions. (BZ#467444, BZ#485947)

This new package also addresses the following issues:

• sosreport now includes options to supply a name and ticket number at the

command line (with --name and --ticket), so that sosreport can be called
automatically by an application, without user input. This enables
applications to collect data automatically at the time that a problem
occurs. (BZ#429407, BZ#463257)

• the hardware plugin contained a malformed regular expression that meant

that the plugin would not always output a full set of keywords. (BZ#447891)

• reports generated by sosreport now include information that was not

previously collected:

• the content of /var/log/cron* and the output of crontab -l.
• partition information from parted instead of what was previously

collected from fdisk, since parted can collect partition information in
situations where fdisk cannot (for example, GUID partitions).

• output from tune2fs -l.
• the content of /etc/inittab.
• the content of /proc/zoneinfo.
• output from "/sbin/service --status-all" to show the current status of

services. Previously, only their settings at boot time were collected (from
"chkconfig --list").

• details from Red Hat Directory Server and Red Hat Certificate Server.
• ext2 and ext3 file system information from dumpe2fs.
• the install date and time for packages.
• the anaconda kickstart file.
• the krb5.conf file.

(BZ#453150, BZ#443037, BZ#461296, BZ#461298, BZ#453792, BZ#455280,
BZ#455296, BZ#459846, BZ#490815)

• sosreport would automatically trigger sysrq, which causes some systems

(such as Oracle Real Application Clusters) to stop responding. Sosreport
will now not run sysrq automatically. (BZ#476969)

• sysreport.legacy used $HOME as its root directory. On systems that did

not have a local home directory, sysreport.legacy could not generate its
report and would exit with the message "Cannot make temp dir".
Sysreport.legacy now uses /bin as its root directory. (BZ#454690)

• sysreport executed python indirectly, through env. On systems where an

end-user had installed python from a source outside of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, this could lead to unreliable results. Sysreport now executes python
directly. (BZ#446081, BZ#486298)

• a typo in sosreport's output ("rappresentative") has been corrected.

(BZ#440451)

• the cluster plug-in contained non-existent commands and valid commands

run on incorrect paths. (BZ#428816)

• sosreport now includes a plugin to support the s390 architecture, which

allows architecture-specific information to be collected for this platform.
(BZ#445223)

• when an exception occurs, the python traceback was previously sent to

standard output. The traceback is now printed to the logs for future
reference. (BZ#361861)

• sosreports gathers a list of paths from named.conf, but explicitly

excludes some of these as collection targets. Previously, if named.conf had
been modified from its default state, it could have contained strings that
prevented sosreports from recognizing invalid collection targets, as the
paths gathered from named.conf may have differed slightly from sosreport's
list of exclusions. If sosreports attempted to collect data from these
targets, it would stop responding. Sosreports now better recognizes paths
to invalid collection targets even if differ slightly from the paths that
it was expecting to find. This type of modification to named.conf will not
now cause sosreports to stop responding. (BZ#453402)

All users of SOS should upgrade to these updated packages that provide
these bug fixes and enhancements.

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/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 361861 - sos traceback.format_exc() not available in RHEL4 (python < 2.4)
• BZ - 440451 - typo in sosreport script
• BZ - 443037 - SOS does not collect ext3 filesystem information.
• BZ - 445223 - sosreport plugin for s390 not included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
• BZ - 446081 - Do not rely on env to execute python
• BZ - 447891 - regular expression error within hardware plugin
• BZ - 453402 - sosreport hangs on non normalized path in named plugin
• BZ - 453792 - sosreport fails to generate fdisk -l
• BZ - 454690 - sysreport.legacy reports "Cannot make temp dir"
• BZ - 455280 - add %{INSTALLTIME:date} to the --qf flags when collecting installed-rpms
• BZ - 455296 - Add /root/anaconda-ks-cfg to sosreport archive
• BZ - 459846 - Sos does not collect krb5.conf
• BZ - 461296 - include Certificate system 7.1 plugin in sosreport
• BZ - 461298 - Addition of Directory Server sos plugins
• BZ - 463257 - Need unattended way to run sosreport
• BZ - 467444 - Sync sosreport with RHEL5 codebase

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)