RHBA-2009:1244 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated perl packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements
are now available.

Description

Perl is a high-level programming language with roots in C, sed, awk and
shell scripting. Perl is good at handling processes and files, and is
especially good at handling text.

These updated perl packages provide fixes for the following bugs:

• the Time::HiRes Perl module is incompatible with the latest version of

glibc, which caused setitimer errors to be written to /var/log/dmesg when
the alarm() function of HiRes was called with a time greater than one
second. With this update, the Time::HiRes module calls setitimer with the
correct parameters and no error messages are written to /var/log/dmesg,
thus resolving this issue. (BZ#453327)

• on multilib systems such as AMD64, the libnet.cfg Perl configuration

file, which controls whether CPAN requests use active or passive FTP, was
located in the /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.5/Net/ directory, where it had no
effect. This has been corrected with this update: libnet.cfg is now located
in the /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/Net/ directory, where its active/passive FTP
settings properly affect CPAN requests. (BZ#490107)

• the @INC array is a list of directories that Perl searches when

attempting to load modules. The @INC array became quite large, which
negatively affected performance and led to verbose error messages. Instead
of adding all search paths to the @INC array, this update populates it only
with those paths which actually do exist at the startup of the interpreter,
thus culling nonexistent paths. In this way, performance is improved and
compatibility with installations of older modules is retained. (BZ#489909)

In addition, these updated packages provide the following enhancements:

• the Scalar::Util and List::Util modules have been updated to version

1.21. (BZ#507378)

Users are advised to upgrade to these updated perl packages, which resolve
these issues and add these 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 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 - 453327 - Time::HiRes V1.86 does work correctly with current glibc
• BZ - 489909 - @INC path too large
• BZ - 490107 - perl configuration file libnet.cfg in wrong directory
• BZ - 507378 - update Scalar::Util to the latest cpan release

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)