RHBA-2012:0250 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated rhn-client-tools packages that fix various bugs are now available for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

The rhn-client-tools packages provide programs and libraries that allow a system
to receive software updates from Red Hat Network (RHN) and Red Hat Network
Satellite.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Prior to this update, the libraries provided by the rhn-client-tools packages

may have occasionally failed with a traceback when the network connection was
reset by peer. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to
display an appropriate error message in this situation. (BZ#595837, BZ#751760)

• When more then one server was enabled in the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date

configuration file and the first server was not available, a yum command such as
"yum update" did not attempt to connect to the second server and kept connecting
to the first one. This update applies a patch that corrects this error, and when
the first server is unavailable, yum now attempts to connect to the second
server as expected. (BZ#706148)

• The rhn-channel utility allows users to subscribe or unsubscribe from a

channel on the command line. Previously, an attempt to provide both username and
password interactively caused the authentication to fail with the "Invalid
username/password combination" error message. This happened, because rhn-channel
did not remove the newline character from the username. With this update, this
error has been corrected, and the rhn-channel utility no longer fails to
authenticate the user when correct credentials are entered interactively.
(BZ#720966)

• When a user runs the rhn_register utility on a system that is already

registered, the utility displays a warning message that the system is already
set up for software updates. This update rephrases this warning message for
clarity. (BZ#729467)

• When a user registered a system with RHN Classic immediately after its

provisioning, the Subscription Manager incorrectly reported that the system is
non-compliant. Consequent to this, the user had to log out and then log in to
the system to work around this problem. With this update, when a user registers
a system with RHN Classic, the Red Hat Network Client Tools now send a message
to the Subscription Manager over D-Bus, resolving this issue. (BZ#744111)

• When using the firstboot application to register a system, "RHN Classic Mode"

is now selected by default on the "Choose Server" screen. (BZ#773463)

• The underlying implementation of exception handling has been corrected.

(BZ#681132)

All users of rhn-client-tools 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 - 595837 - Bug in rhnplugin.conf RHEL 5.5
• BZ - 681132 - Add/Remove Software crashes on Startup (SSL cert. verify fails in RHN)
• BZ - 751760 - "AttributeError: CommunicationError instance has no attribute 'value'" when running through stopped proxy

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)