RHBA-2013:1534 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated perl packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

Perl is a high-level programming language that is commonly used for system
administration utilities and web programming.

The perl package has been upgraded to upstream version 2.021, which provides a
number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. Support for
64-bit ZIP archives has been improved. Especially, size of files bigger than
2^32 bytes is now reported properly. (BZ#810469)

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, referring to a named capturing group with non-matching name caused

a memory leak. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to
avoid memory leaks in this scenario. (BZ#767608)

• When the parse_file() function from the Pod::Man or Pod::Text modules was

executed without specifying the function output, parse_file() terminated. With
this update, parse_file() has been modified to use standard output by default.
As a result, parse_file() no longer fails with undefined output. (BZ#819042)

• Prior to this update, the find2perl utility incorrectly translated global

expressions that contained the question mark ("?") character. Consequently, Perl
code matched different expressions than the 'find' command-line utility. With
this update, the global expression translator has been modified and find2perl
now matches the same glob expressions as the 'find' utility does. (BZ#825713)

• Exiting scope of an object whose destructor method has been declared but not

yet defined caused the Perl interpreter to terminate unexpectedly. This bug has
been fixed and the interpreter now handles the undefined destructor methods as
expected. (BZ#839788)

• When the XML-LibXSLT library was built without the libgdm-devel package

installed on the system, it was unable to link to other libraries. With this
update, the glibc-devel, gdbm-devel, and db4-devel packages have been added to
the perl-devel list of run-time dependencies. As a result, it is now possible to
build native Perl libraries without complications. (BZ#905482)

• While executing Perl code with the "format" option in a prototyped subroutine,

the Perl interpreter terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With
this update, various back-ported fixes have been added to the perl package. As a
result, it is now possible to use formats in prototyped subroutines without
complications. (BZ#920132)

• Prior to this update, the XML::Simple::XMLin() parser did not process input

from the Getopt::Long::GetOptions() handler. Consequently, XML::Simple::XMLin()
reported an unsupported method. With this update, Getopt::Long::GetOptions() has
been modified to produce a simple string output that other Perl modules can read
without complications. (BZ#973022)

• After installing a custom signal handler, the perl script attempted to access

the thread-specific interpreter structure. This structure has already been
disabled and Perl terminated with a segmentation fault. This bug has been fixed
and Perl scripts no longer ask for the interpreter structure. As a result, Perl
no longer crashes in the aforementioned scenario. (BZ#991852)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• This update adds the CGI.pm module to the list of perl-core dependences.

CGI.pm is now installed along with the perl-core package. (BZ#985791)

Users of perl 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/site/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

Fixes

• BZ - 698552 - test in taint.t is not correct
• BZ - 767608 - Memory leak with non-matching named captures
• BZ - 810469 - IO::Uncompress::Unzip->getHeaderInfo returns wrong (un)compressed member size for zip64 archives
• BZ - 819042 - Trying to use the Pod::Man "parse_file" function in Perl results in errors
• BZ - 825713 - find2perl does not translate ? glob properly
• BZ - 839788 - NULL pointer dereference in Perl
• BZ - 905482 - perl's Config libs contains -lgdbm but it is not in perl-devel
• BZ - 985791 - perl-core does not contain all perl modules

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)