RHBA-2012:0269 - 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The macros have been replaced by the major() and minor() functions, and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)