RHBA-2013:1586 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated abrt, libreport, and btparser packages that fix several bugs and add two
enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

ABRT is a tool to help users to detect defects in applications and to create a
problem report with all the information needed by a maintainer to fix it. ABRT
uses a plug-in system to extend its functionality.

The libreport libraries provide an API for reporting different problems in
applications to different bug targets like Bugzilla, ftp, and trac.

The btparser utility is a backtrace parser and analyzer library, which works
with backtraces produced by the GNU Project Debugger. It can parse a text file
with a backtrace to a tree of C structures, allowing to analyze the threads and
frames of the backtrace and process them.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• If the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf file was modified so that the "DumpLocation" and

"WatchCrashdumpArchiveDir" variables referred to the same directory, the ABRT
utility tried to process the files in that directory as both archives and new
problem directories, which led to unpredictable results. With this update, ABRT
refuses to start if such misconfiguration is detected. (BZ#854668)

• While creating a case, the reporter-rhtsupport utility sent the operation

system (OS) version value which RHT customer center server did not accept.
Consequently, a new case failed to be created and an error message was returned.
With this update, suffixes such as "Beta" in the OS version value are not
stripped, RHT customer center server accepts the version value, and a case is
created. (BZ#896090)

• Prior to this update, the abrt-watch-log and abrt-dump-oops utilities were

creating too many new problem directories when a kernel error occurred
periodically. As a consequence, the user was flooded with problem reports and
the /var partition could overflow. To fix this bug, abrt-dump-oops has been
changed to ignore all additional problems for a few minutes after it sees 5 or
more of them. As a result, the user is not flooded with problem reports.
(BZ#952773)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• The Red Hat Support tool required an API for querying crashes caught by ABRT.

With this update, python API for ABRT has been provided and it is now possible
to use python API to query bugs caught by ABRT. (BZ#952704)

• There is a high probability that users who do not use the graphical

environment (headless systems) will miss the problems detected by the ABRT
utility. When the user installs the abrt-console-notification packages, they now
see a warning message in the console regarding new problems detected since the
last login. (BZ#961231)

All users of abrt, libreport and btparser 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 - 886631 - abrtd marks problems having count > 1 as duplicates
• BZ - 903195 - abrt-gui help menu item points to generic RHEL documentation
• BZ - 905429 - Buffered inotify reads can get abrt out of sync
• BZ - 909617 - 'post-create' on 'xxx' exited with 1 Corrupted or bad directory xxx, deleting
• BZ - 948278 - Change default set of reporters shown by CLI/GUI
• BZ - 948286 - Change default set of reporters shown by CLI/GUI
• BZ - 952704 - provide the python API for abrt
• BZ - 952773 - abrt throttling not working
• BZ - 953813 - ABRT reports wrong duplicates
• BZ - 961231 - [RFE] add the console notification to RHEL6
• BZ - 993564 - update the translation
• BZ - 993626 - update the translation

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)