Issued:

2011-05-19

Updated:

2011-05-19

RHBA-2011:0646 - coreutils bug fix update

Synopsis

coreutils bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

Updated coreutils packages that fix several bugs are now available.

Description

The coreutils package contains the core GNU utilities. It is the combination of the old GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages.

These updated packages fix the following bugs:

• The su utility was previously not built with PIE and RELRO enabled, as they were in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. In this update, it is built as a PIE executable and is using RELRO protection. (BZ#630017)

• Previously, when reading a line longer than 16KiB, the tac utility reallocated its primary buffer. Before exiting, the tac utility tried to free the already freed original buffer, which caused a utility crash after a double free error displayed. This was fixed and the tac utility no longer frees an already freed buffer. (BZ#628212)

• Previously, the hardware control flow, DTRDSR, was implemented via TC{SG}ETX. This was changed to TC{SG}ET ioctl, which caused the CDTRDSR support in stty to fail. This was fixed to allow stty to correctly handle CDTRDSR control flow. (BZ#598631)

• Previously, the internalization patch for coreutils had an unsafe initialization of char* bufops that left bufops uninitialized or initialized to NULL on the first usage. This behavior called memmove from an incorrect address, namely from address 0 and size 0. This is now fixed and bufops is correctly initialized for the first use. (BZ#683799)

• Previously, when the multibyte LC_TIME differed from LC_CTYPE, an assertion failure caused the sort utility to crash irrespective of the parameters provided to it. This is fixed to prevent a crash when the sort utility is run and now works as expected. (BZ#649224)

• Previously, the information page about 8-bit octal values did not mention checking if the value was lower than 256. Due to this, when a command like "/bin/echo -e '\0610'" was used, the results were not accurate. This is now fixed to provide more accurate information about the behavior of octal values. (BZ#660033)

• Previously, when the dd utility used pipes, it read and wrote partial blocks. When the size of the block written was shorter than the specified maximum output block size, the "oflag=direct" would turn off, which resulted in degraded I/O performance. The workaround for this behavior, which involves the addition of "iflag=fullblock" is now available in the information documentation. (BZ#614605)

• Previously, the coreutils information page was not sufficiently clear about behavior when multiple parent and leaf node directories are created. This is now fixed to incorporate additional information in the coreutils information page about the @option mode and its behavior when combined with the --parents option. (BZ609262)

• Previously, documentation for tail command's --sleep-interval option did not outline the results of inotify support. This is now fixed and the documentation states that with inotify support, the --sleep-interval option is only relevant when the tail command reverts to the old polling-based method. (BZ#662900)

All coreutils users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.

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 This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• coreutils-8.4-13.el6.i686.rpm
• coreutils-libs-8.4-13.el6.x86_64.rpm
• coreutils-8.4-13.el6.src.rpm
• coreutils-debuginfo-8.4-13.el6.s390x.rpm
• coreutils-8.4-13.el6.s390x.rpm
• coreutils-debuginfo-8.4-13.el6.x86_64.rpm
• coreutils-8.4-13.el6.x86_64.rpm
• coreutils-debuginfo-8.4-13.el6.i686.rpm
• coreutils-libs-8.4-13.el6.ppc64.rpm
• coreutils-libs-8.4-13.el6.i686.rpm
• coreutils-libs-8.4-13.el6.s390x.rpm
• coreutils-debuginfo-8.4-13.el6.ppc64.rpm
• coreutils-8.4-13.el6.ppc64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 598631
• This content is not included.BZ - 609262
• This content is not included.BZ - 614605
• This content is not included.BZ - 628212
• This content is not included.BZ - 649224
• This content is not included.BZ - 660033
• This content is not included.BZ - 662900
• This content is not included.BZ - 683799

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.