RHBA-2015:1407 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated procps packages that fix two bugs and add various enhancements are now
available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The procps packages contain a set of system utilities that provide system
information. The procps packages include the following utilities: ps, free,
skill, pkill, pgrep, snice, tload, top, uptime, vmstat, w, watch, and pwdx.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Previously, behavior of the libproc library was unreliable when it was loaded

with the dlopen() call after the environment was changed with the setenv() call.
As a consequence, an invalid memory access error could occur in libproc. With
this update, the find_elf_note() function obtains the auxiliary vector values
using a different and safer method based on parsing the /proc/self/auxv file,
and the described problem no longer occurs. (BZ#1163404)

• Prior to this update, the stat2proc() function did not process empty files

correctly. Consequently, when an empty stat file was processed, the ps utility
could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. Handling of empty stat
files has been fixed, and ps no longer crashes in this scenario. (BZ#1172059)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• This update introduces the new "--system" option to the sysctl utility. This

option enables sysctl to process configuration files from a group of system
directories. (BZ#1120580)

• The new "-h" option has been added to the "free" utility. The purpose of this

option is to show all output fields automatically scaled to the shortest
three-digit representation including the unit, making the output conveniently
human-readable. (BZ#993072)

• The "w" utility now includes the "-i" option to display IP addresses instead

of host names in the "FROM" column. (BZ#1123311)

Users of procps 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 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 - 1123311 - RFE: "w" should have "-n" flag to suppress reverse name resolution of IP addresses
• BZ - 1163404 - [procps] find_elf_note invalid read if setenv has been called before libproc init

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)