RHBA-2014:1457 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The coreutils packages contain the core GNU utilities. It is a combination of
the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, the "df" command did not display target device information when a

symbolic link was specified as a parameter. Consequently, the information about
the file was shown instead of the information about the device. This update
applies a patch to fix this bug and the "df" command works as expected in the
described scenario. (BZ#812449)

• When no user was specified, the "id -G" and "groups" commands printed the

default group ID listed in the password database. Consequently, the IDs were in
certain cases ineffective or incorrect. With this update, the commands have been
enhanced to print only proper IDs, thus showing correct information about the
groups. (BZ#1016163)

• A previous update of the coreutils packages fixed the tail utility to handle

symbolic links correctly. However, due to this update, tail returned unnecessary
warnings about reverting to polling. This update provides a patch to fix this
bug and the warning is only shown when necessary. (BZ#1046818)

• A recent update of the coreutils packages changed the format of the output

from the "df" and "df -k" commands to one line per entry, which is required for
POSIX mode. As a consequence, scripts relying on the previous two lines per
entry format started to fail. To fix this bug, two-line entries have been
reintroduced to the output for modes other than POSIX. As a result, scripts
relying on the two-line format no longer fail. (BZ#1057026)

• A recent update of the coreutils packages caused a regression in the signal

handling in the su utility. As a consequence, when the SIGTERM signal was
received, a parent process was killed instead of the su process. With this
update, handling of the SIGTERM signal has been fixed and su no longer kills the
parent process upon receiving the termination signal. (BZ#1063887)

• The chcon(1) manual page did not describe the default behavior when

dereferencing symbolic links; the "--dereference" option was not documented.
This update adds the appropriate information to the manual page. (BZ#1064621)

• Certain file systems, for example XFS, have special features such as

speculative preallocation of memory holes. These features could cause a failure
of the "dd" command test in the upstream test suite. As a consequence, the
coreutils package source rpm could not be rebuilt on XFS file systems. To
address this bug, the test has been improved to prevent the failures in the
described scenario. (BZ#1075679)

• The "tail --follow" command uses the inotify API to follow the changes in a

file. However, inotify does not work on remote file systems and the tail utility
is supposed to fall back to polling for files on such file systems. Previously,
the Veritas file system was missing from the remote file system list and
therefore, "tail --follow" did not display the updates to the file on this file
system. The Veritas file system has been added to the remote file system list
and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#1104244)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancement:

• This update enhances the "dd" command to support the count_bytes input flag.

When the flag is specified, the count is treated as numbers of bytes rather than
blocks. This feature is useful for example when copying virtual disk images.
(BZ#1098078)

Users of coreutils 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 - 812449 - df: dereference symlinks when command line arguments
• BZ - 1016163 - id prints incorrectly groups for the session
• BZ - 1046818 - A tail command gives an unnecessary message 'tail: inotify cannot be used, reverting to polling' even in non-follow mode
• BZ - 1063887 - su terminates its parent process upon receiving SIGTERM
• BZ - 1075679 - Cannot rebuild coreutils on XFS filesystem - sparse test fails
• BZ - 1098078 - Support the count_bytes iflag in dd
• BZ - 1104244 - Add Veritas Clustered File System to the list of remote filesystems, so that tail --follow does not use inotify.

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)