RHBA-2013:1827 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated Red Hat Satellite server packages that fix several bugs are now
available for Red Hat Satellite 5.6.

Description

Red Hat Satellite is a systems management tool for Linux-based infrastructures.
It allows for provisioning, remote management and monitoring of multiple Linux
deployments with a single, centralized tool.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• With Red Hat Satellite version 5.6, the DATE data type has been replaced by

the TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIMEZONE data type in order to improve Satellite's
behavior in multi-time zone setups. As a consequence, the search daemon stopped
working when an external Oracle database was used. The search daemon has been
modified so that its time zone is now set when connecting to an external
database, which resolves the problem. (BZ#1023669)

• When using a PostgreSQL database, an empty and NULL strings are recognized as

two different values. Consequently, an attempt to clone a child channel without
selecting a parent channel failed with an Internal Server Error. To fix this
problem, empty strings are now converted to the NULL value before they are
passed to the PostgreSQL database. An attempt to clone a parentless child
channel now fails with a proper informative error message. (BZ#1018194)

• When using RH Satellite 5.6 with a PostgreSQL database version 8.4, the query

optimizer was unable to optimize an execution plan for certain search queries.
Specifically, when searching for: modified configuration files for the given
system, servers that had the errata autoupdate feature enabled, and servers with
new errata. These issues significantly degraded the Satellite's performance.
This update restructures the related elaborate queries so that the Satellite's
performance meets the expectations in these cases. (BZ#1027050, BZ#1025636,
BZ#1024395)

• When fetching system details for a virtual guest with an empty Virtualization

field, the system.getDetails API failed with a NullPointerException. With this
update, the underlying serializer code has been modified so that Satellite now
handles such a situation gracefully and returns the requested system details
with an empty string as the value of the Virtualization field. (BZ#1025626)

• Previously, cloning fully-synchronized channels that contained a large number

of errata was a time- and resource-demanding process because errata were
published one by one. This update significantly improves this process by
publishing all cloned errata at once. (BZ#1012468)

• The Satellite's Web User Interface displayed disabled activation keys as being

enabled, misleading users. This bug has been fixed and the Satellite's Web UI
now shows a real state of the activation keys. (BZ#1007998)

• The process of listing errata that were available to be cloned into a custom

channel on the Satellite's Web UI was very time-demanding and could result in an
Internal Server Error. With this update, the related elaborate query has been
restructured so that the Satellite's performance meets the expectations in this
scenario. (BZ#1023482)

All users of Red Hat Satellite are advised to upgrade to these updated packages,
which fix these bugs.

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

As a part of the fix for bug 1023669, after successful package update,
please clean search indexes of spacewalk-search service, by running
the following command as root:

service rhn-search cleanindex

Affected Products

• Red Hat Satellite 5.6 for RHEL 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Satellite 5.6 for RHEL 6 s390x
• Red Hat Satellite 5.6 for RHEL 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Satellite 5 Managed DB 5.6 for RHEL 6 x86_64
• Red Hat Satellite 5 Managed DB 5.6 for RHEL 6 s390x
• Red Hat Satellite 5 Managed DB 5.6 for RHEL 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Satellite 5 Managed DB 5.6 for RHEL 5 s390x

Fixes

• BZ - 1007998 - Unable to disable activation keys

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)