RHBA-2010:0283 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated oprofile package that corrects architecture-specific bugs and
adds support for Nehalem-EP and IBM POWER7 processors is now available.

Description

OProfile is a system-wide profiler for Linux systems. The profiling runs
transparently in the background and profile data can be collected at any
time. OProfile uses the hardware performance counters provided on many
processors, and can use the Real Time Clock (RTC) for profiling on
processors without counters.

This update applies the following fixes and enhancements:

• An incorrect argument in a binutil library call caused a segmentation

fault in opreport whenever the --debug-info option was used. The
elf_find_function() function in libbfd required a non-NULL symbol, but
opreport did not receive a warning whenever NULL symbols were present. This
update adds an early warning system for this, thereby resulting in more
graceful error reporting for the presence of NULL symbols rather than a
segmentation fault.
(BZ#450642)

• OProfile now supports Nehalem-EP processor performance events.

(BZ#498619)

• When the OProfile daemon started on the Itanium architecture, it created

children processes to run perfmon; however, those children processes did
not properly close file descriptors for stdin, stdout, and stderr. This
could prevent oprofiled from properly sending output to any third-party
applications. This update corrects the behavior by adding close() functions
for open stdin, stdout, and stderr file descriptors, which corrects the
daemon behavior on the Itanium architecture.
(BZ#518480)

• A regression in the binutils-devel static library caused the

bfd_get_section_by_name() function to produce incorrect output. This
regression was caused by an error that was present in the binutils-devel
specfile when it was compiled. Since OProfile uses binutils-devel at
compile time, bfd_get_section_by_name() also cause opreport -l to fail.
With this release, binutils-devel is compiled with a corrected specfile;
OProfile is then re-compiled with this version of binutils-devel, thereby
fixing the regression.
(BZ#527679)

• OProfile now supports the IBM POWER7 processor.

(BZ#566524)

All OProfile users should apply this update.

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 - 518480 - Oprofile seems to not daemonize properly on ia64

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)