RHBA-2011:0668 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated sysstat package that fixes various bugs and adds two enhancements is
now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The sysstat package provides the sar and iostat commands. These commands enable
system monitoring of disk, network, and other I/O activity.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• on a system with a running KVM virtual machine and under very special

circumstances, the mpstat utility may have produced an output that contained
incorrect values. This error no longer occurs, and the mpstat utility now always
produces the correct output. (BZ#595231, BZ#536928)

• on a system with a running KVM virtual machine and under very special

circumstances, the sar utility may have produced an output that contained
incorrect values. This error no longer occurs, and the sar utility now always
produces the correct output. (BZ#637705)

• due to recent changes in the /proc/interrupts format, running the "mpstat -I

ALL" command did not produce the correct output. With this update, the mpstat
utility has been updated to recognize the new format, and running the above
command now works as expected. (BZ#624130)

• previously, the "iostat -n" command was not aware of any NFS shares that were

mounted or unmounted while processing. Consequently, iostat reported incorrect
values such as:

nfs:/share 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

In this updated package the "iostat -n" command is made aware of any NFS shares
that are mounted or unmounted while the command is running, and reports
meaningful results. (BZ#690402)

• under certain circumstances, the sar tool was unable to accurately report

system activity on systems with multiple CPUs that also use the tickless kernel.
If this issue was encountered, sar would report values of 0.00 for all values of
some CPUs. In this updated package, sar correctly handles the behavior of the
tickless kernel and returns accurate results. (BZ#631841)

As well, this update adds the following enhancements:

• previously, iostat lacked the ability to provide granular I/O statistics for

Common Internet File System (CIFS) shares. This updated iostat package includes
the new cifsiostat tool, providing the ability to generate I/O statistics for
CIFS shares. (BZ#592283)

• previously, default parameters could not be set for the sadc command. In this

updated package, parameters for the "sadc" command can be set using the
"${SADC_OPTIONS}" variable located in the "/etc/sysconfig/sysstat" configuration
file (BZ#690400)

All users of sysstat are advised to upgrade to this updated package which fixes
these bugs and adds these enhancements.

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
https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 624130 - mpstat -I ALL displays incorrect values
• BZ - 631841 - sar doesn't report system activity information on tickless kernel correctly.
• BZ - 637705 - 'sar -u ALL' doesn't report an correct value.
• BZ - 690400 - Enable parametrization of sadc arguments
• BZ - 690402 - iostat: bogus value appears when device is unmounted/mounted

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)