RHBA-2014:1440 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated boost packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The boost packages contain a large number of free peer-reviewed portable C++
source libraries. These libraries are suitable for tasks such as portable
file-systems and time/date abstraction, serialization, unit testing, thread
creation and multi-process synchronization, parsing, graphing, regular
expression manipulation, and many others.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Due to the way the Python programming language was packaged for Red Hat

Enterprise Linux, the boost packages could not be provided for secondary
architectures. For example, boost-devel.i686 was not available on the x86-64
architecture. The Python packaging has been updated, and it is now possible to
install secondary-architecture versions of the boost packages. (BZ#1037680)

• A coding error in the shared_ptr pointer previously caused a memory leak when

serializing and unserializing shared pointers. The shared_ptr code has been
corrected and the memory leak now no longer occurs. (BZ#1021004)

• Due to an error in threading configuration of GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)

version 4.7 or later, Boost failed to detect the support for multithreading
versions of GCC. This patch fixes the error and Boost now detects multithreading
support in the described circumstances correctly. (BZ#969183)

• Prior to this update, a number of boost libraries were not compatible with GCC

provided with Red Hat Developer Toolset. A fix has been implemented to address
this problem and the affected libraries now properly work with Red Hat Developer
Toolset GCC. (BZ#1108268)

• The mpi.so library was previously missing from the boost libraries.

Consequently, using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) in combination with
Python scripts failed. With this update, mpi.so is included in the boost
packages and using MPI with Python works as expected. (BZ#801534)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• The MPICH2 library has been replaced with a later version, MPICH 3.0. Note

that Boost packaging has been updated accordingly and new packages are named
boost-mpich* instead of boost-mpich2*. (BZ#1132455)

Users of Boost are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these
bugs and add this enhancement.

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/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 - 801534 - missing mpi.so library in boost mpi python
• BZ - 969183 - RHEL 6 boost not compatible with DTS gcc
• BZ - 1037680 - boost-devel i686 and x86_64 bit packages on RHEL-6
• BZ - 1108268 - devtoolset-gcc not compatible with boost

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)