RHBA-2013:0401 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated numactl packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The numactl packages provide a simple Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) policy
support and consist of the numactl program to run other programs with a specific
NUMA policy and the libnuma library to do allocations in applications using the
NUMA policy.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the number of CPUs were miscalculated in the

"/sys/devices/system/cpu" directory, because the "cpufreq" and "cpuidle" files
were counted, so, the additional two CPUs were added erroneously. With this
update, the number of CPUs is now counted correctly. (BZ#804480)

• The global pointer "numa_all_cpus_ptr" was supposed to be set to a bitmask

allocated by the library with bits that represent all CPUs on which the calling
thread can execute. Consequently, it did not function as documented when the
bitmask was only set to CPU0. With this update, the underlying source code is
now fixed and the "numa_all_cpus_ptr" contains only specified CPUs, when the
taskset option contains CPU0. (BZ#814294)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• The existing tool numastat, which was a Perl script, was rewritten to a C

program to provide much more NUMA information. The default operation of numastat
will remain the same for compatibility with current users' end scripts.
(BZ#829896)

Users of numactl are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix
these bugs and add 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/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 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

Fixes

• BZ - 811614 - libnuma numa_parse_cpustring returns warnings inconsistently
• BZ - 814294 - numa_all_cpus_ptr reports the wrong thing when bound to cpu0

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)