Issued:

2011-05-19

Updated:

2011-05-19

RHBA-2011:0668 - sysstat bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

sysstat bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

An updated sysstat package that fixes various bugs and adds two enhancements is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The sysstat package provides the sar and iostat commands. These commands enable system monitoring of disk, network, and other I/O activity.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• on a system with a running KVM virtual machine and under very special circumstances, the mpstat utility may have produced an output that contained incorrect values. This error no longer occurs, and the mpstat utility now always produces the correct output. (BZ#595231, BZ#536928)

• on a system with a running KVM virtual machine and under very special circumstances, the sar utility may have produced an output that contained incorrect values. This error no longer occurs, and the sar utility now always produces the correct output. (BZ#637705)

• due to recent changes in the /proc/interrupts format, running the "mpstat -I ALL" command did not produce the correct output. With this update, the mpstat utility has been updated to recognize the new format, and running the above command now works as expected. (BZ#624130)

• previously, the "iostat -n" command was not aware of any NFS shares that were mounted or unmounted while processing. Consequently, iostat reported incorrect values such as:

nfs:/share 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

In this updated package the "iostat -n" command is made aware of any NFS shares that are mounted or unmounted while the command is running, and reports meaningful results. (BZ#690402)

• under certain circumstances, the sar tool was unable to accurately report system activity on systems with multiple CPUs that also use the tickless kernel. If this issue was encountered, sar would report values of 0.00 for all values of some CPUs. In this updated package, sar correctly handles the behavior of the tickless kernel and returns accurate results. (BZ#631841)

As well, this update adds the following enhancements:

• previously, iostat lacked the ability to provide granular I/O statistics for Common Internet File System (CIFS) shares. This updated iostat package includes the new cifsiostat tool, providing the ability to generate I/O statistics for CIFS shares. (BZ#592283)

• previously, default parameters could not be set for the sadc command. In this updated package, parameters for the "sadc" command can be set using the "${SADC_OPTIONS}" variable located in the "/etc/sysconfig/sysstat" configuration file (BZ#690400)

All users of sysstat are advised to upgrade to this updated package which fixes these bugs and adds these enhancements.

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

• sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.src.rpm
• sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.s390x.rpm
• sysstat-debuginfo-9.0.4-18.el6.i686.rpm
• sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.i686.rpm
• sysstat-debuginfo-9.0.4-18.el6.ppc64.rpm
• sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.ppc64.rpm
• sysstat-debuginfo-9.0.4-18.el6.s390x.rpm
• sysstat-debuginfo-9.0.4-18.el6.x86_64.rpm
• sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 624130
• This content is not included.BZ - 631841
• This content is not included.BZ - 637705
• This content is not included.BZ - 690400
• This content is not included.BZ - 690402

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.