Issued:

2012-06-20

Updated:

2012-06-20

RHBA-2012:0857 - yum bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

yum bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

Yum is a command-line utility that allows the user to check for, and automatically download and install updated RPM packages.

Bug Fixes:

• The anacron scheduler starts the yum-cron utility with the default niceness value of 10. Consequently, Yum RPM transactions ran with a very low priority. Also, any updated service inherited this niceness value. This update adds the "reset_nice" configuration option, which allows Yum to reset the niceness value to 0 before running an RPM transaction. With this option set, Yum RPM transactions run and updated services are restarted with niceness value 0 as expected. (BZ#742363)

• When dependency resolving fails, yum performs RPMDB check to detect and report existing RPMDB problems. Previously, yum terminated unexpectedly if a PackageSackError exception was raised. The application now returns the message "Yum checks failed" when a PackageSackError is raised and the remaining RPMDB checks are skipped. (BZ#735234)

• The yum history rollback command could return a traceback if a history checksum was used for the rollback. This happened due to incorrect handling of keyword arguments in the _conv_pkg_state() function. The history checksum argument is now handled correctly. (BZ#809392)

• When yum was started in a directory that no longer existed, it terminated with a traceback. The yum utility now checks if the current working directory exists; if this is not the case, it changes to the root directory, and continues its execution as expected. (BZ#711358)

• If the "yum upgrade" command was run with the --sec-severity option arguments, the command execution could enter an infinite loop. The code has been fixed and the option works as expected. (BZ#804120)

• If user names and passwords for yum proxy server contained any of the characters "@", ":", or "%", they were not properly quoted in the proxy server URL and the values were misinterpreted by the HTTP client. As a result, yum failed to connect to the proxy server. This update adds proper quoting, and user names and passwords containing the characters are now resolved correctly. (BZ#770117)

• The Yum transactions in yum history were ordered according to their transaction time. However, this could be misleading. The transactions are now ordered according to their IDs. (BZ#809373)

• The "yum makecache" command could fail if one of the repositories had the "skip_if_unavailable=1" setting and was unavailable. Such repositories are now skipped as expected. (BZ#769864)

• The Yum utility could terminate unexpectedly with a traceback similar to the following:

  init_.py:2000:downloadPkgs:UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character

This happened because Yum failed to handle localized error messages with UTF-8 characters generated during package downloads. UTF-8 characters in error messages are now handled correctly and localized error messages are displayed as expected. (BZ#798215)

• On failure, the "yum clean" command returned an incorrect error code and output containing messages that implied that yum performed the clean action successfully. The yum utility now returns only the error message and the correct error code. (BZ#735333)

• If the "yum provides" command was invoked with an empty-string argument, yum terminated with a traceback. The command now returns an error message and command usage information. (BZ#817491)

Enhancements:

• Yum now prints "Verifying" messages after finishing updates, which inform the user that the respective packages were installed correctly. (BZ#737826)

• When run as a non-root user, yum cannot read local SSL certificate files and the download process can fail. The yum utility now checks if it can access repository certificate files. If the check fails, it returns more accurate messages containing the filename that failed the check and information that the repository was skipped. (BZ#690904)

Users of yum should 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.

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 https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• yum-3.2.29-30.el6.noarch.rpm
• yum-cron-3.2.29-30.el6.noarch.rpm
• yum-3.2.29-30.el6.src.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 711358
• This content is not included.BZ - 735333
• This content is not included.BZ - 742363
• This content is not included.BZ - 769864
• This content is not included.BZ - 798215
• This content is not included.BZ - 804120
• This content is not included.BZ - 809373
• This content is not included.BZ - 809392
• This content is not included.BZ - 817491

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.