RHBA-2015:1362 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated sysvinit packages that fix two bugs are now available for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The sysvinit packages contain programs that control basic system processes.
SysVinit includes the init program, which is the first program started by the
Linux kernel when the system boots. The init daemon process is the parent of all
processes and continues running until the system is shut down. The sysvinit
packages also contain many commonly used utilities, such as reboot, shutdown,
poweroff, and sulogin.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• If a running binary is replaced, its executable symbolic link in the /proc

file system is appended with "(deleted)". Previously, the pidof utility could
not handle the suffix. As a consequence, pidof falsely reported that there was
no running binary with the original path. With this update, the "(deleted)"
suffix is removed when parsing /proc, and pidof works correctly in the described
situation. (BZ#760251)

• Usually, init scripts have the same name as the respective daemons and when

the init script looks for the name of the daemon, the PID of the init script
that starts the search needs to be excluded. Previously, the pidofproc()
function could falsely identify certain processes started by an init script as
the daemon of the same name, as the init script could, for example, be running
twice. Consequently, pidofproc() failed to return the correct PID of the daemon.
With this update, a new "-m" option is available for the pidof utility. The new
"-m" option makes it possible to omit any processes that are similar to those
explicitly ignored. (BZ#883857)

Users of sysvinit 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 - 760251 - pidof breaks after prelink
• BZ - 883857 - lsb-defined pidofproc function has false positives

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)