RHBA-2011:0397 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

Sed is a stream or batch (non-interactive) editor. Sed takes text as input,
performs an operation or set of operations on the text, and outputs the modified
text.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Due to an error in a symbolic link resolution, an attempt to use in-place

substitution (that is, the "-i" command line option) with a symbolic link caused
sed to fail with the following error:

sed: ck_follow_symlink: couldn't lstat [symbolic_link]/[original_file]: Not a
directory

With this update, when a symbolic link is supplied, sed determines the original
file path correctly. As a result, using the in-place substitution on symbolic
links now works as expected. (BZ#490473)

• Previously, when an input stream contained a wide character that ended with

U+005C (that is, the '\' character), sed failed to process it and reported a
syntax error. This update applies an upstream patch that ensures the wide
characters are now processed as expected. Additionally, this update also
prevents sed from entering an infinite loop while handling incomplete string
sequences. (BZ#527427)

All users of sed are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
these bugs.

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 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 - 490473 - sed does not handle inline edits of symlinks with no dir portion
• BZ - 527427 - sed reports syntax errors with some multibyte characters

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)