RHBA-2013:1575 - 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 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 6 x86_64
• 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 - 682378 - makes assumptions about network device names
• BZ - 697273 - Unable to set ondemand governor on Atom-based server

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)