RHBA-2012:0872 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated binutils packages that fix two bugs and add two enhancements are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The binutils packages contain a collection of binary utilities, including "ar"
(for creating, modifying and extracting from archives), "as" (a family of GNU
assemblers), "gprof" (for displaying call graph profile data), "ld" (the GNU
linker), "nm" (for listing symbols from object files), "objcopy" (for copying
and translating object files), "objdump" (for displaying information from object
files), "ranlib" (for generating an index for the contents of an archive),
"readelf" (for displaying detailed information about binary files), "size" (for
listing the section sizes of an object or archive file), "strings" (for listing
printable strings from files), "strip" (for discarding symbols), and "addr2line"
(for converting addresses to file and line).

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the GNU linker could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation

fault when attempting to link together object files of different architectures
(for example, an object file of 32-bit Intel P6 with an object file of Intel
64). This update modifies binutils so that the linker now generates an error
message and refuses to link object files in the scenario described. (BZ#676194)

• When generating build-ID hashes, the GNU linker previously allocated memory

for BSS sections. Consequently, the linker could use more memory than was
necessary. This update modifies the linker to skip BSS sections and thus avoid
unnecessary memory usage when generating build-ID hashes. (BZ#809616)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• With this update, backported patches have been included to support new AMD

processors. Also, a duplicate entry for the bextr instruction has been removed
from the disassembler's table. (BZ#739444)

• The GNU linker has been modified in order to improve performance of Table of

Contents (TOC) addressability and Procedure Linkage Table (PLT) call stubs on
the PowerPC and PowerPC 64 architectures. (BZ#739144)

All users of binutils are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which
fix these bugs and add these enhancements.

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/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension 6 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems) 6 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 676194 - ld segfaults on arch mismatch of objects when linking
• BZ - 739144 - binutils TOC and PLT optimizations
• BZ - 809616 - default enabled --build-id causes excessive memory utilization for f77 codes with a large BSS

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)