RHBA-2012:0218 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated ruby packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

Ruby is an extensible, interpreted, object-oriented, scripting language. It has
features to process text files and to do system management tasks.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• To identify the current working directory, the Ruby virtual machine used the

path_check_0() function that recursed until it identified the respective
absolute path. Previously, the function could cause the Ruby virtual machine to
recurse infinitely and consume excessive memory. This happened if the
environment path was broken as the getcwd() function failed to determine the
full path of the current working directory. This update backports the
non-recursive implementation of the path_check_0() function from Ruby 1.8.6,
which relies on a series of macros, and the path_check_0() function returns the
correct current working directory under these circumstances. (BZ#435631)

• The ruby update released on 2009-07-02 as RHSA-2009:1140 included a fix for

CVE-2009-1904. This fix introduced a regression which caused leading zeros after
the decimal point in BigDecimal objects to be dropped. This could, potentially,
lead to incorrect mathematical calculations. This update fixes this problem by
ensuring that leading zeros following a decimal point in BigDecimal objects are
not dropped. (BZ#510277)

• Due to the missing "require 'rdoc/usage'" statement in the RI (Ruby Index)

library, which is part of the ruby package, the Ruby virtual machine could raise
the following exception:

uninitialized constant RI::Paths (NameError)

This update adds the missing require statement to the ri_options.rb file of the
RI library file and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#445399)

• The "Text::normalize" method included in the REXML (Regular Expressions XML)

library, which is part of the Ruby standard library, did not work correctly for
ampersand entities (&). With this update, the underlying "REXML::Text" class
in the text.rb library has been modified and the ampersand characters are now
normalized correctly. (BZ#577351)

All ruby users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these
bugs.

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 - 435631 - ruby recurses indefinitely when cwd is broken and path empty
• BZ - 445399 - require 'rdoc/usage'' raises an Exception because of a missing require in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/ri/ri_options.rb
• BZ - 510277 - ruby: patch for CVE-2009-1904 introduced a regression [rhel-5]

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)