RHBA-2013:1663 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The sysstat packages provide a set of utilities which enable system monitoring
of disks, network, and other I/O activity.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the sysstat package did not support dynamically attributed major

device numbers. Consequently, devices with these numbers were not listed in sar
reports under their real names. With this update, support for dynamically
attributed major device numbers has been added to sysstat. As a result, all
devices now appear with their correct names in sar reports. (BZ#804534)

• The sysstat utility employs cron services to schedule monitoring tasks rather

then using a dedicated daemon. After executing the "service sysstat start"
command, sysstat marks the time of the counter reset and than it shuts down.
Prior to this update, the "service sysstat status" command returned the "0" exit
code, which gave the impression that sysstat is running constantly. With this
update, the exit code has been changed to "3", which correctly reflects the
behavior of sysstat and is compliant with LSB standard. (BZ#820992)

• A previous sysstat update changed binary data files in a backward incompatible

way, but the version number of these binary data files remained the same.
Consequently, using a later sysstat version to read binary data files created by
an earlier version of sysstat could have produced invalid results. The version
number of sysstat binary data files has been updated, thus fixing this bug. As a
result, the current sysstat version will not read binary data files created by
previous versions. For more information, please refer to the description of the
"--legacy" option in the sar(1) manual page. (BZ#967386)

• Prior to this update, the umask command was executed too late in the sa1

script. Under certain circumstances, this could have caused incorrect file
permissions of newly created files. With this update, executing umask has been
moved to the appropriate place in the sa1 script. As a result, newly created
files have correct permissions. (BZ#996134)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• Kernel device names, such as sda or sdb, might point at different devices

every boot. To prevent possible confusion, support for persistent device names
has been added to the iostat and sar programs. Persistent names can be enabled
with the new "-j" command-line option for both iostat and sar. (BZ#826399)
(BZ#826403)

• The sysstat package has been modified to store the collected statistics

longer. The original period of 7 days has been extended to 28 days, thus
allowing for better analysis of more complex performance issues. (BZ#838914)

• With this update, a new "-y" option has been added to the iostat program. This

option allows to skip first "since boot" statistics in the report, so there is
no longer need to post-process the iostat output in this matter. (BZ#850810)

Users of sysstat 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 - 820992 - init scripts failure
• BZ - 850810 - [RFE] add iostat option to report interval statistics in first report

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)