RHBA-2010:0695 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated python-dmidecode package that fixes a bug is now available.

Description

The python-dmidecode module is a Python extension that uses the code-base of the
dmidecode utility, and presents the DMI data as Python dictionaries or XML
utilizing libxml2.

This update provides fixes for the following bugs:

• previously, the Python script would be stopped because of a assertion failure.

This was due to the DMI tables on certain hardware with which unexpectedly
returned NULL values instead of a string. With this update, the script does not
anymore encounter assertion faults and processes NULL values correctly as empty
strings. (RHBZ#596133)

• previously a segmentation fault occured when trying to identify the processor

type via string comparison. This was due to the DMI tables on certain hardware
which did not report the CPU processor information as a string and returned NULL
instead. This update adds additional checks for NULL values before doing this
string comparison. (RHBZ#621837)

• previously, a large amount of duplicated warnings could appear in the output.

This was due to the DMI tables on certain hardware where the length description
did not match the length of the tables found on the system. With this update,
the logging function has been improved to avoid unnecessary duplication of
warnings. (RHBZ#621895)

All users of the python-dmidecode module are advised to upgrade to this updated
package, that addresses these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the 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 - 596133 - Assertion when decoding DMI type 0x08 on pogolinux-1.rhts.eng.rdu.redhat.com
• BZ - 621837 - Segfault when decoding DMI data in dmi_processor_id()
• BZ - 621895 - Wrong DMI structures length: 4760 bytes announced, ia64 only

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)