RHEA-2011:0037 - Product Enhancement Advisory

Topic

Updated systemtap packages that rebase to upstream version 1.3 are now available
for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

SystemTap is an instrumentation system for systems running the Linux kernel,
version 2.6. Developers can write scripts to collect data on the operation of
the system.

With this update SystemTap is now re-based on upstream version 1.3. This re-base
features several enhancements, including improved userspace probing, new
scripting
language features, more robust backtracing/symbol-processing, and extended
probing reach. In addition, this re-base also applies several upstream bug
fixes, including:

• When loading a module, stap executes stapio to handle interactions. A bug in

runtime/staprun/mainloop.c made it possible for stapio to fail in executing a
module control file even after successfully opening it. When this occurred,
stapio returned an "ERROR: unexpected EOF" when loading/unloading a kernel
module concurrently. This update applies an upstream patch to
runtime/staprun/mainloop.c that instructs stapio to quit (instead of retrying)
when a read error occurs, avoiding a loop. (BZ#557165)

• When running rpm -V systemtap systemtap-server, TPS reports two verification

failures: systemtap-server.ppc64: /var/log/stap-server.log .M...UG. [tps:B] and
systemtap.ppc64: /usr/share/systemtap/runtime/uprobes .M....G. [tps:B]. This
update applies an upstream patch that corrects this. (BZ#559633)

For more details on bug fixes and enhancements applied by this update, please
refer to the "systemtap" section in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 Technical
Notes:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.6/html/Technical_Notes/index.html

All SystemTap users are advised to apply this update.

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
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 513672 - stap-prep doesn't work without yum-utils, but no dep on it
• BZ - 555808 - Systemtap uses useradd without specifying UID
• BZ - 557165 - [S1][RHEL5.4] A stapio damemon outputs 'ERROR: Unexpected EOF' permanently when loading /unloading a kernel moudule concurrently.
• BZ - 559633 - Errata testing: rpm -V fails due to packaging issues
• BZ - 560720 - [Errata testing] socketpair syscall argstr has wrong "UNKNOWN VALUE" string
• BZ - 573031 - [errata testing] stap-prep script missing
• BZ - 598615 - Changing register contents (such as $return) causes crash
• BZ - 602706 - Potential early unload problem causing kernel crash
• BZ - 606726 - rebase systemtap for rhel5.6
• BZ - 629190 - unresolved dependency: systemtap-testsuite.ia64 -> prelink
• BZ - 648420 - [REG][5.6] When systemtap is used with '-I' option, segmentation fault occurs.

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)