Synopsis

powertop bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

PowerTOP is a tool to detect all the software components that make a computer
consume more than necessary power when idle. PowerTOP can be used to reduce
power usage by running various commands on the system.

The powertop package has been upgraded to upstream version 2.3, which provides a
number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version including
corrected handling of arbitrary interface names. Moreover, checks for usability
of the ondemand governor have been added. Also, several changes have been made
to enhance user experience and to simplify and improve power management
profiling capabilities. (BZ#682378, BZ#697273, BZ#829800)

This update also fixes the following bug:

• The default soft limit for per-process open file descriptors is 1024, and the
  default hard limit for per-process file descriptors is 4096. By using the
  performance counter subsystem, the PowerTOP tool could exceed the limit on
  complex systems. Consequently, an error message about missing kernel support for
  perf was displayed. This update adds a fix that temporarily increases both the
  soft and hard file descriptor limits for the current process to the kernel
  limit. If the kernel limit is still insufficient, PowerTOP now displays an error
  message indicating that the file descriptor limits should be manually increased.
  (BZ#998021)
  

Users of powertop 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 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

Fixes

• BZ - 682378 - makes assumptions about network device names
• BZ - 697273 - Unable to set ondemand governor on Atom-based server

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
x86_64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 7ebc8a3126afbab331b8a247900ce90f2f899cc87c3fb97e3f46ebab0f4d5891
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: d1941871f0c9d8c51d7c803cd3a1d1e6efa4b79f8ac26e6ae0ffbcff584c63dd
i386
powertop-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: dc3aececb8845b9f8c625468ced539bc6207109e86602902c9d6bbe0a1366c3e
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: a78b646adb0d2e59830d8fc3e2de8257d3c47d1827e97583b1a4e390e89d39ad

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
x86_64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 7ebc8a3126afbab331b8a247900ce90f2f899cc87c3fb97e3f46ebab0f4d5891
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: d1941871f0c9d8c51d7c803cd3a1d1e6efa4b79f8ac26e6ae0ffbcff584c63dd
i386
powertop-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: dc3aececb8845b9f8c625468ced539bc6207109e86602902c9d6bbe0a1366c3e
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: a78b646adb0d2e59830d8fc3e2de8257d3c47d1827e97583b1a4e390e89d39ad

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
x86_64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 7ebc8a3126afbab331b8a247900ce90f2f899cc87c3fb97e3f46ebab0f4d5891
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: d1941871f0c9d8c51d7c803cd3a1d1e6efa4b79f8ac26e6ae0ffbcff584c63dd
i386
powertop-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: dc3aececb8845b9f8c625468ced539bc6207109e86602902c9d6bbe0a1366c3e
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: a78b646adb0d2e59830d8fc3e2de8257d3c47d1827e97583b1a4e390e89d39ad

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
s390x
powertop-2.3-3.el6.s390x.rpm	SHA-256: a5b1b2935b52f2cc57c94ae270c2b5c722c7c195aeeb667782e1363037109e3f
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.s390x.rpm	SHA-256: 7b20c0f713fe45ba8e4d74f95399ecdfec5d7ba2864ca40e73495b58c37454cd

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
ppc64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.ppc64.rpm	SHA-256: 92544d5bd8561d8ca5f2e2e923423c4010c442b1c196755aa9127172c4aa4f36
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.ppc64.rpm	SHA-256: 1a7e7586c8094514729e155d206967ba0c51971019070ed94a259cb80a89c452

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
x86_64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 7ebc8a3126afbab331b8a247900ce90f2f899cc87c3fb97e3f46ebab0f4d5891
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: d1941871f0c9d8c51d7c803cd3a1d1e6efa4b79f8ac26e6ae0ffbcff584c63dd

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 6

SRPM
powertop-2.3-3.el6.src.rpm	SHA-256: dbf624d978229443ac0e51df37ddaccf249af1ca108905a207093d175b2d8b04
x86_64
powertop-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: 7ebc8a3126afbab331b8a247900ce90f2f899cc87c3fb97e3f46ebab0f4d5891
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.x86_64.rpm	SHA-256: d1941871f0c9d8c51d7c803cd3a1d1e6efa4b79f8ac26e6ae0ffbcff584c63dd
i386
powertop-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: dc3aececb8845b9f8c625468ced539bc6207109e86602902c9d6bbe0a1366c3e
powertop-debuginfo-2.3-3.el6.i686.rpm	SHA-256: a78b646adb0d2e59830d8fc3e2de8257d3c47d1827e97583b1a4e390e89d39ad