Synopsis

crash bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated crash package that fixes various bugs is now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5

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.

This updated crash package includes fixes for the following bugs:

• 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#715072)
  
• On AMD64 and Intel 64 architectures, the "bt" command failed when the shutdown
  NMI was issued to a 32-bit task that had executed a "sysenter" instruction and
  the RSP still contained the zero value loaded from the MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP
  register. Consequently, the backtrace issued the following warning message:
  

"WARNING: possibly bogus exception frame"

and was unable to make a transition from the NMI exception stack back to the
process stack. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to
address this issue, and the aforementioned command no longer fails. (BZ#676408)

• On AMD64 and Intel 64 architectures, the "bt" command failed with several
  backtrace errors for non-crashing active tasks:
  

"bt: cannot resolve stack trace"

This was due to a failure to properly transition from the shutdown NMI stack
back to the process stack. This update fixes these errors, and executing the
"bt" command on non-crashing active tasks works as expected. (BZ#713050)

• KVM virtual systems contain an I/O hole in the physical memory region from
  0xe0000000 to 0x100000000 (3.5 GB to 4 GB). If a guest is provisioned with more
  than 3.5 GB of RAM, then the memory above 3.5 GB is "pushed up" to start at
  0x100000000 (4 GB). However, the "ram" device headers in the KVM dumpfiles do
  not reflect that. As a result, numerous error messages were displayed during
  invocation, and the session would often fail. With this update, the crash
  utility takes the I/O hole into account despite the fact that the "ram" device
  headers in KVM dumpfiles do not; consequently, error messages are no longer
  displayed during invocation. (BZ#716327)
  
• The KVM I/O hole size is currently set to either 1 GB or 512 MB, but its
  setting is hardwired into the Qemu code that was used to create the dumpfile.
  The dumpfile is a "savevm" file that is designed to be used for guest migration,
  and since inter-version save/load operations are not supported, the I/O hole
  information does not have to be encoded into the dumpfile. Prior to this update,
  the I/O hole for dumpfiles created by older Qemu version was not being set to
  1GB, so if the KVM guest was configured with more than 3GB of memory, the crash
  session would typically display numerous "read error" messages during session
  initialization. With this update, the crash session does not return any error
  messages during session initialization. (BZ#715070)
  

All users of crash are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves 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 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 - 676408 - bt: WARNING: possibly bogus exception frame
• BZ - 715070 - crash: RHEL5 "virsh dump" support fails if guest has >= 3GB memory
• BZ - 715072 - Rebase request for crash utility RHEL5.8 errata

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
x86_64
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: cc141540a7e21baf2b5ae399989fe2dc0dfcbd869ae75ce04dab6710fce66ced
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 771cf6e5551d5846e9881d64d6c369f15c951f8ea0dd01c7885bcd36fe22be94
ia64
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.ia64.rpm	SHA-256: caf7df9fccb1df67fd1362d4b7464c12f82169a7df76681df1b16bd7e3d063d3
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.ia64.rpm	SHA-256: 5e7f297b25d0f4b3d8613a02262f859d569d74e2d418596cc2bcb79a87474d42
i386
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 4c279b0da14c4c95209f12bf9a3dfd298f8d4708a30c17eddc084b115a749866
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
x86_64
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: cc141540a7e21baf2b5ae399989fe2dc0dfcbd869ae75ce04dab6710fce66ced
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 771cf6e5551d5846e9881d64d6c369f15c951f8ea0dd01c7885bcd36fe22be94
i386
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 4c279b0da14c4c95209f12bf9a3dfd298f8d4708a30c17eddc084b115a749866
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
x86_64
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: cc141540a7e21baf2b5ae399989fe2dc0dfcbd869ae75ce04dab6710fce66ced
i386
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 4c279b0da14c4c95209f12bf9a3dfd298f8d4708a30c17eddc084b115a749866

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
s390x
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.s390x.rpm	SHA-256: eb80eae956cc384112293237babcb887840abd5699e7bfee2372aeec4299cb40
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.s390.rpm	SHA-256: 01afc1d93b566a33b760727e356dbc34fea56935901b722d5089e1d9093cd110
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.s390x.rpm	SHA-256: e6b9ca54c8d6321e7740514d38594d1e6f65132560b01cb93cf3e0d318aabb95

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
ppc
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.ppc64.rpm	SHA-256: 6aebbdd902e1aea35c61d028666586c101b8ad15f856a71c3d550d03ea0a237e
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.ppc64.rpm	SHA-256: d4e2fabeb89071ed071c59031aa7dd5ffadcb313596909df901ff1e3f1482b48

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5

SRPM
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: b3ee9958bb98735c8570d02c5031c069ca71b5c51220793c0644fc9e32934fd9
x86_64
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: cc141540a7e21baf2b5ae399989fe2dc0dfcbd869ae75ce04dab6710fce66ced
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 771cf6e5551d5846e9881d64d6c369f15c951f8ea0dd01c7885bcd36fe22be94
i386
crash-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 4c279b0da14c4c95209f12bf9a3dfd298f8d4708a30c17eddc084b115a749866
crash-devel-5.1.8-1.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: ff7f022c47cf3da684ba9a9cf3eb93d4ac40fc803d9b495f496b8aadbb2c1a5b