RHBA-2010:0200 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated procps package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The procps package contains a set of system utilities that provide
system information. Procps includes ps, free, skill, pkill, pgrep,
snice, tload, top, uptime, vmstat, w, watch and pdwx.

This updated procps package includes fixes for the following bugs:

• There was an array in proc/devname.c that was trying to hold bytes in

excessive of its capacity, leading to string overflow errors and making the
names unusable. A patch has been incorporated that widens the strings so
that they include the NUL terminator so that this error no longer occurs.
(BZ#469495)

• The ps command defines a fixed width for user names. If a name exceeds

this width, the command will revert to displaying the numeric id instead.
This behavior was not properly documented in the man page for the command
so it has now been added to make users more clearly aware of this behavior.
(BZ#471476)

• There was an issue when using the slabtop command with the "-o" option.

The
command's output would immediately disappear instead of being printed to
stdout meaning that the information could not be read. slabtop has now been
altered so that output is directed to stdout. As a result, users can now
read the output on the terminal screen. (BZ#475963)

• With increases in memory sizes, tools such as vmstat were misaligning the

header columns and output for statistics such as free, buff and cache
memory. To fix this issue, the "-w" switch has been modified to account for
longer figures pertaining to memory statistics. With these wider fields,
the columns and their headers are now correctly aligned. (BZ#484789)

• The ps command would occasionally throw a double-free corruption error.

This would cause the software to die unexpectedly. This has been fixed by
adding a test that looks for zero at the end of a process. As a result, ps
no longer aborts unexpectedly. (BZ#487700)

• The "sysctl -a" command was using deprecated syscalls. The software has

been modified so that it no longer uses these deprecated calls. As a
result, when the archaic code is eventually removed, sysctl will continue
to work. A warning message has also been removed from the package's man
page. (BZ#501785 BZ#556508)

• The ps command was not producing a core dump when it crashed, making it

extremely hard to troubleshoot. Code to handle SIGABRT and SIGSEGV has now
been added to the software so that it will produce a core dump if it
crashes. As a result, problems will be much easier to trace. (BZ#512857)

• The ps utility's "etime" field shows the elapsed time since a process was

started. On heavily-loaded systems, it was possible for a negative value to
be returned due to an integer overflow. This has been rectified
so that it always correctly returns a positive value, thus providing users
with accurate data.. (BZ#556762)

• If the user pressed "f" whilst running top and selected a low number of

fields, erroneous and jumbled text would appear at the top of the screen.
The top utility has now been modified so that the text clears correctly and
the output is displayed as one would expect. (BZ#556777)

• The vmstat utility has a field entitled "Time stolen from a virtual

machine." Unfortunately, the addition of the "-w" switch had an adverse
impact upon the way this information was output. Consequentially, when
vmstat was run in default mode, the field's header was missing and when it
was run with the "-w" option, it disappeared altogether. A patch has now
been added and, as a result, the field now displays correctly at all times.
(BZ#558475)

• The "pmap -x" command was not displaying the resident set size (RSS) for

process ids. No figures were appearing in the column. A patch has been
applied so that the figures for this field are now correctly calculated and
displayed. (BZ#561392)

Users are advised to upgrade to this updated procps 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/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 - 469495 - procps string size issue
• BZ - 475963 - slabtop -o is broken?
• BZ - 487700 - double free or corruption detected in ps
• BZ - 501785 - sysctl is using deprecated syscall net.ipv6.neigh.lo.base_reachable_time

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)