RHBA-2011:0702 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated e2fsprogs packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements
are now available.

Description

The e2fsprogs packages contain a number of utilities that create, check, modify,
and correct inconsistencies in second extended (ext2) file systems. This
includes e2fsck (which repairs file system inconsistencies after an unclean shut
down), mke2fs (which initializes a partition to contain an empty ext2 file
system), tune2fs (which modifies file system parameters), and most of the other
core ext2fs file system utilities.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• The e2fsprogs package appeared to contain several regressions because of a

number of type-punning issues caused by flags used during the process of
building Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Additionally, e2fsprogs had a dependency on
libcom_err that was not linked to a specific version of libcom_err. A specific
version has been defined to prevent interoperability issues between packages.
(BZ#599338)

• The badblocks command aborted with the error "badblocks: File too large while

trying to determine device size" when attempting to run on a 16TB file system.
This was caused by a bug in the badblocks command, which this bug fixes,
resolving the issue. (BZ#631593)

• A device that is exactly 16T in size was too large to be opened by the

resize2fs utility and attempting to resize some large file systems may remove
the resize inode feature if no reserved blocks were left after the operation.
This resulted in resize2fs to fail on that device, and resizing a file system
close to 16T could remove the resize inode, making further resizing impossible.
This patch treats 16T file systems as 16T - 4k, as mkfs does, allowing them to
be manipulated by the resize2fs utility, resulting in ext3 and ext4 file systems
now able to be resized on devices exactly 16T in size. Do not, however, remove
resize inode even if 0 reserved blocks remain, so that subsequent downward
resizes are still possible. (BZ#654093)

• When a value greater than INT_MAX (2147483647) was specified as the argument

to mke2fs -G <number of groups>, the command did not complete. This was because
the argument for int_log2() was "int", therefore when a value exceeding INT_MAX
is specified for the -G option, the value of "arg" overflows. Also, e2fsprogs
only supports 2^32 block file systems so asking for anything greater cannot be
honored. Therefore, this patch rejects a number that overflows, and restricts it
to INT_MAX+1 so the result does not wrap. This resolves the issue. (BZ#643390)

• The filefrag command occasionally returned an incorrect number of extensions,

returning 0 instead of 1 when using the -v extension. In this patch,
special-casing the number of extensions returned in verbose mode and skipping
the printing of the header for columns resolves this issue. (BZ#653234)

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve 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
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 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 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 643390 - mke2fs -G hangs up if an argument value exceeding INT_MAX is specified for the option
• BZ - 653234 - filefrag returns wrong extent counts
• BZ - 654093 - [6.0]The resize2fs command fails to run on a 16TiB filesystem.

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)