RHBA-2015:1266 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated perl packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

Perl is a high-level programming language that is commonly used for system
administration utilities and web programming.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Due to creating threads after tying a variable to an SDBM database using the

SDBM_File Perl module, the Perl interpreter terminated unexpectedly when
terminating Perl threads. With this update, the DB_File, GDBM_File, NDBM_File,
ODBM_File, and SDBM_File Perl modules have been modified to destroy their
objects only from the thread context which created the objects. As a result, the
destructors of the aforementioned file objects are now thread-safe. Note,
however, that other operations on the objects cannot be called from other
threads. In general, the DB_File, GDBM_File, NDBM_File, ODBM_File, and SDBM_File
Perl modules remain thread-unsafe. (BZ#1104827)

• Previously, using the Module::Pluggable Perl module to locate plug-ins in a

single-letter-named package did not work correctly. As a consequence, existing
single-letter-named packages were not found. An upstream patch has been applied,
and single-letter-named plug-ins are now located by Module::Pluggable correctly.
(BZ#1086215)

• Previously, the perl-suidperl package consumed the libperl.so library from the

perl-libs subpackage with no explicit package-version requirement. This could
cause problems, for example, during upgrading. With this update, an explicit
dependency on the same version of perl-libs has been added to perl-suidperl,
which avoids accidental mixing of incompatible perl-suidperl and perl-libs
packages on a system. (BZ#1161170)

• The Perl Locale::Maketext localization framework did not properly translate

the backslash (\) characters. As a consequence, Perl rendered the backslashes as
double (\\). With this update, Perl no longer escapes the backslashes in literal
output strings, and they appear correctly. (BZ#1025906)

• Prior to this update, the Archive::Tar Perl module unpacked PAX headers into

artificial PaxHeader subdirectories, which caused the extracted tree to be
different from the archived tree. Consequently, installation of a Comprehensive
Perl Archive Network (CPAN) distribution by the cpan client failed. This bug has
been fixed, and it is now possible to install CPAN distributions archived with
extended attributes. (BZ#1184194)

• Previously, when the SHA::Digest method was called on the corresponding class,

Perl terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. An upstream patch has
been applied, and calling any SHA::Digest method on a class yields a proper
exception instead of Perl crash. (BZ#1189041)

• Previously, due to earlier problems with threads, several tests were blocked

for IBM S/390, IBM System z, or PowerPC platforms in the Perl specification
file. Consequently, when building the perl package, internal tests were not
performed on these platforms, even though the original problems no longer
occurred. Now, when building the perl package, the tests are performed on all
supported architectures. (BZ#1201191)

Users of perl 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.

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

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 - 1025906 - Locale::Maketext interpolating escaped backslashes improperly
• BZ - 1104827 - Perl core-dumps if a hash is tied to SDBM_File before spawning a thread
• BZ - 1184194 - perl-Archive-Tar-1.58-138.el6 breaks content on unpacking tar archives with PAX headers
• BZ - 1189041 - Crash in Digest::SHA if a method is invoked on an uninitialized object
• BZ - 1201191 - run 'make test' on ppc64, s390, s390x

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)