RHBA-2015:0463 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated crash packages that fix several bugs and add various enhancements are
now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Description

The crash packages provide a self-contained tool that can be used to investigate
live systems and kernel core dumps created from the netdump, diskdump, kdump,
and Xen/KVM "virsh dump" facilities from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The crash packages have been upgraded to upstream version 7.0.9, which provides
a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#1110513)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, a regression caused significant performance loss in the "ps"

subcommand of the crash utility. As a consequence, under certain circumstances,
it could take extremely long for "ps" to execute after a kernel panic. With this
update, the underlying code has been fixed to address the performance of "ps",
and executing the command now takes an appropriate amount of time. (BZ#1134177)

• Prior to this update, the crash packages did not build on the little-endian

variant of IBM Power Systems. Consequently, users of this platform did not have
crash available, which prevented other programs from working. With this update,
crash has been updated to support the little-endian variant of IBM Power
Systems, and the users now have
working crash packages. (BZ#1123991)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernels have removed their STACKFAULT exception

stacks. As a consequence, the "bt" command displayed an invalid exception stack
location in backtrace errors that transition from an exception stack to a
process kernel stack. An upstream patch has been applied to fix this bug, and
the "bt" command now works as intended. (BZ#1179476)

• Previously, the "bt" command failed to generate backtraces of the active tasks

when run on the little-endian variant of IBM Power Systems compressed kdump
dumpfiles. An upstream patch has been applied to fix this bug, and the "bt"
command now works as intended. (BZ#1184401)

Users of crash 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.

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 7 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.7 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.6 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems - Extended Update Support 7.3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 7 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.7 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.6 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.5 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.4 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian - Extended Update Support 7.3 ppc64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - AUS 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - TUS 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems) 7 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS Compute Node 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.7 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.6 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Update Services for SAP Solutions 7.3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support for IBM Power, big endian 7 ppc64

Fixes

• BZ - 1114088 - crash --osrelease will spin chewing cpu on certain input files
• BZ - 1169555 - crash-7.0.9-1 x86_64 backtrace code is not utilizing the registers from QEMU-generated dumpfile headers

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)