Synopsis

gfs2-utils bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated gfs2-utils package that fixes various bugs and adds one enhancement
is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

The gfs2-utils package provides the user-space utilities necessary to mount,
create, maintain and test GFS2 file systems.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• To expand a GFS2 file system, additional resource groups must be added to
  manage new space. The gfs2_grow utility ensures this by writing to the rindex
  file. Previously, if there was not enough free space in the file system to write
  out new resource group entries, gfs2_grow was unable to update the rindex file.
  As a consequence, gfs2_grow was unable to expand the file system and failed with
  the following error message:
  

Error writing new rindex entries;aborted.

With this update, gfs2_grow writes one resource group at first, and then the
rest instead of attempting to write all the new resource groups at once. Now,
gfs2_grow successfully expands the file system in the described scenario.
(BZ#711451)

• Previously, the libgfs2 library used the obsolete MAJOR() and MINOR() macros
  to handle device numbers. These macros did not support device numbers greater
  than 255, and could cause error messages to be displayed when using gfs2-utils.
  The macros have been replaced by the major() and minor() functions, and
  gfs2-utils now works properly with device numbers greater than 255. (BZ#714739)
  
• Previously, the "mkfs.gfs2" command worked only on block devices. Using the
  command on sparse files failed with an error message. An upstream patch has been
  applied to address this issue, and the mkfs.gfs2 utility now also recognizes
  regular files. (BZ#720935)
  
• Previously, the gfs2_grow utility failed to expand a GFS file system if the
  file system contained only one resource group. This was due to old code based on
  GFS1 (which had different fields) that calculated distances between resource
  groups and did not work with only one resource group. This update adds the
  rgrp_size() function in libgfs2, which calculates the size of the resource group
  instead of determining its distance from the previous resource group. The file
  system with only one resource group can now be expanded successfully.
  (BZ#730091)
  
• Due to a bug in libgfs2, sentinel directory entries were counted as if they
  were real entries. As a consequence, the mkfs.gfs2 utility created file systems
  which did not pass the fsck check when a large number of journal metadata blocks
  was required (for example, a file system with block size of 512, and 9 or more
  journals). With this update, incrementing the count of the directory entry is
  now avoided when dealing with sentinel entries. GFS2 file systems created with
  large numbers of journal metadata blocks now pass the fsck check cleanly.
  (BZ#745126)
  

This update also adds the following enhancement:

• Prior to this update, when executing the "gfs2_edit" command with the
  "savemeta" or "restoremeta" options specified, the command produced uncompressed
  files that were very large in size. This update allows gfs2_edit to compress
  metadata while writing by using the "savemeta" option, and also read a
  compressed metadata file by using the "restoremeta" option. (BZ#702296)
  

All users of gfs2-utils are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
fixes these bugs and adds this enhancement.

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 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 - 711451 - GFS2: gfs2_grow fails on a full file system with stuffed rindex file
• BZ - 720935 - GFS2: mkfs.gfs2 doesn't work on regular files

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5

SRPM
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: 1d4cd53612c03a5e035e3a2f9caf508d4ad38eb2fe0a8628096966319378c61a
x86_64
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 0adcf6250085d546b78d1a57d2a25d8e4d452906ad953681dae3f39c7ea33f3b
ia64
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.ia64.rpm	SHA-256: ccb3445338da45110404f6621be60cfafa8333b0bc69d69dd5a0d0ddeebad30b
i386
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 5ff0af4412db5c0f240ec368ba2d7483904f8871a6937109720081a1761c3255

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5

SRPM
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: 1d4cd53612c03a5e035e3a2f9caf508d4ad38eb2fe0a8628096966319378c61a
x86_64
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 0adcf6250085d546b78d1a57d2a25d8e4d452906ad953681dae3f39c7ea33f3b
i386
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 5ff0af4412db5c0f240ec368ba2d7483904f8871a6937109720081a1761c3255

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5

SRPM
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: 1d4cd53612c03a5e035e3a2f9caf508d4ad38eb2fe0a8628096966319378c61a
x86_64
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 0adcf6250085d546b78d1a57d2a25d8e4d452906ad953681dae3f39c7ea33f3b
i386
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 5ff0af4412db5c0f240ec368ba2d7483904f8871a6937109720081a1761c3255

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5

SRPM
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: 1d4cd53612c03a5e035e3a2f9caf508d4ad38eb2fe0a8628096966319378c61a
ppc
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.ppc.rpm	SHA-256: eece10f36b51e6c1bd730ca0ae48a35e60e4cd91386185572542b77b2ae36641

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5

SRPM
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.src.rpm	SHA-256: 1d4cd53612c03a5e035e3a2f9caf508d4ad38eb2fe0a8628096966319378c61a
x86_64
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 0adcf6250085d546b78d1a57d2a25d8e4d452906ad953681dae3f39c7ea33f3b
i386
gfs2-utils-0.1.62-34.el5.i386.rpm	SHA-256: 5ff0af4412db5c0f240ec368ba2d7483904f8871a6937109720081a1761c3255