RHBA-2011:1486 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated gawk package that fixes a bug is now available for Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5.

Description

The gawk package contains the GNU version of awk, a text processing utility. Awk
interprets a special-purpose programming language to do quick and easy text
pattern matching and reformatting jobs.

This updated gawk package fixes the following bug:

• Prior to this update gawk interpreted (under certain circumstances) some

run-time variables as internal zero-length variable prototypes. When gawk tried
to free such run-time variables, it actually freed the internal prototypes, that
were allocated just once due to memory savings. Consequently gawk sometimes
failed and the error message "awk: double free or corruption" was displayed.
With this update the problem has been corrected and the error no longer occurs.
(BZ#629196)

All users of gawk are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
this bug.

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 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 - 629196 - gawk regression from RHEL3/4

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)