RHBA-2013:0014 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated tomcat5 packages that fix various bugs are available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

Apache Tomcat is a servlet container for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages
(JSP) technologies.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Symbolic links to system libraries could be lost rendering Tomcat unusable if

a problem occurred during Tomcat start while the RELINK script was running. The
event triggering the problem could have been any kind of start interruption,
such as closing Tomcat with CTRL+C, driver crash, power outage, and so on. With
this update, to provide a workaround for this issue, the RELINK script is called
only if explicitly required by the user as the problem is caused by a
subordinate utility script, which does not belong to Tomcat. (BZ#493007)

• When the tomcat server parsed a cookie whose name contained either single- or

double-quotes and then passed that cookie name and value to a servlet, any
quotes were removed from the cookie name as expected; however, the cookie values
were empty. This update corrects the parsing so that single- or double-quotes
can be used inside cookie names and the correct cookie values are returned.
(BZ#530089)

• The OPTION request did not return the TRACE method as an allowed method and

incorrectly reported TRACE as an allowed method. With this update, the
information returned to the OPTION request has been corrected. (BZ#543995)

• Previously, context.xml files that did not specify the Document Base (docBase)

property caused Tomcat to fail on startup with a NullPointerException. With this
update, if the docBase property is not defined, it is handled gracefully and the
path name to the context is used as docBase. Note that when deploying a context,
the docBase attribute is mandatory. (BZ#689924)

• On IBM S/390 and 64-bit PowerPC architectures, Tomcat Administration Tool

terminated unexpectedly and accessing failed with HTTP Status 404 as JSP
pre-compilation was disabled. With this update, JSP has been pre-compiled so
that compilation at runtime is not needed and Tomcat Administration Tool can be
accessed in this scenario. (BZ#578648)

• When a context was deployed with a web application and the

etc/localhost/[webapp].xml file existed, tomcat threw a NullPointerException.
With this update, the bug no longer occurs. (BZ#691833)

• Previously, java.util.logging was not working due to the missing

tomcat-juli.jar library in Tomcat. The library has been added and the Tomcat
logging works as expected. (BZ#548961)

• The /etc/init.d/tomcat5 script returned an incorrect exit status when stopped.

With this update, the correct exit value is returned on stop. (BZ#587215)

Users are advised to upgrade to these updated tomcat5 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/knowledge/articles/11258

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 - 548961 - tomcat5 commons-logging not working
• BZ - 578648 - Disabling JSP pre-compilation on s390x and ppc64 kills Tomcat Administration Tool
• BZ - 689924 - tomcat5 NullPointerException on start
• BZ - 691833 - tomcat5-5.5.23-0jpp.16.el5.x86_64 causes errors when deploying rhn.xml at tomcat5 startup

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)