RHBA-2011:1648 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The crash package provides a self-contained tool that can be used to investigate
live systems, and kernel core dumps created from the netdump, diskdump, kdump,
and Xen/KVM "virsh dump" facilities from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• The crash package has been upgraded to upstream version 5.1.8, which provides

a number of enhancements and bug fixes over the previous version. (BZ#710193)

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, compressed kdump dump files were handled incorrectly on AMD64 and

Intel 64 architectures if a system contained more than 454 CPUs. In such a case,
the crash session terminated during initialization with the "crash: compressed
kdump: invalid nr_cpus value: [cpus]" error message. A patch has been provided
to address this issue, and the compressed dump files are now handled properly,
thus fixing this bug. (BZ#705142)

• When the first chunk of physical memory on a system was assigned to NUMA

(Non-Uniform Memory Architecture) node 1 (typically it is assigned to NUMA node
0), the "kmem -s" or "kmem -S" command incorrectly showed all cache blocks
allocated by the slab allocator as empty. This bug has been fixed, and the kmem
command now shows populated kmem_cache slab data correctly. (BZ#716931)

• In a rare scenario, a non-crashing CPU received a shutdown NMI (non-maskable

interrupt) immediately after receiving an interrupt from another source. Because
the IRQ entry-point symbols "IRQ0x00_interrupt" through "IRQ0x##_interrupt" no
longer existed, the bt command terminated with the "bt: cannot transition from
exception stack to current process stack" error message on AMD64 and Intel 64
architectures. This bug has been fixed, and backtrace now properly transitions
from the NMI stack back to the interrupted process stack. (BZ#712214)

This update adds the following enhancements:

• The crash.8 man page and the associated built-in "crash -h" output have been

re-written. The crash.8 man page now clarifies the required invocation options,
adds all of the rarely-used command line options that have proliferated over the
years, and updates the ENVIRONMENT variables section. The "crash -h" output now
closely mimics the relevant parts of the crash.8 man page. (BZ#695413)

• With this update, the new "--osrelease [dump_file]" command line option that

displays the OSRELEASE vmcoreinfo string from a kdump dump file has been added.
(BZ#703467)

Users of crash 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 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 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 695413 - crash manpage is confusing; crash -h is worse than manpage
• BZ - 703467 - Need an option to retrieve kernel version from vmcore
• BZ - 705142 - [RHEL6.1] crash: compressed kdump: invalid nr_cpus value: <cpus>
• BZ - 710193 - Rebase request for crash utility RHEL6.2 errata
• BZ - 712214 - bt: cannot transition from exception stack to process stack

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)