RHBA-2011:0168 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated psmisc package that fixes two bugs is now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

The psmisc package contains utilities for managing processes on your system:
pstree, killall, and fuser. The pstree command displays a tree structure of all
of the running processes on your system. The killall command sends a specified
signal (SIGTERM if nothing is specified) to processes identified by name. The
fuser command identifies the PIDs of processes that are using specified files or
file systems.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Due to an error in memory allocation, an attempt to kill a process group by

using the "killall -g" command could fail. With this update, the memory
allocation has been corrected, and the killall utility now works as expected.
(BZ#668991)

• Previously, using the fuser command to list processes that use a UDP port

failed to produce the expected results. This was caused by an incorrect use of
the /proc/net/tcp socket table instead of /proc/net/udp. With this update, the
underlying source code has been adjusted to parse the correct socket table, and
fuser no longer fails to list processes for UDP ports. (BZ#669309)

All users of psmisc are advised to upgrade to this updated 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
https://access.redhat.com/kb/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 for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.6 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.6 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 for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 5.6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 5.6 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 5.6 i386
• 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 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support from RHUI 5.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Update Support from RHUI 5.6 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 668991 - uninitialized memory leading to `killall -g name ` failure
• BZ - 669309 - fuser from psmisc does not parse /proc/net/udp when -n udp is specified

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)