Issued:
2013-01-07
Updated:
2013-01-07

RHBA-2013:0062 - procps bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

procps bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

Updated procps packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

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:

  • Due to an inaccurate internal evaluation of the CPU utilization, the "ps --sort" command did not work as expected in some cases. Consequently, some of the values in the final sorted sequence were in an incorrect order. This bug has been fixed and these values are sorted correctly in the described scenario. (BZ#598561)

  • Prior to this update, the description of the SWAP field in the top(1) man page could be misleading and confusing. The man page has been fixed by using the SWAP field description from the man page of the successor project procps-ng. (BZ#730724)

  • Descriptions for some of the top command switches were missing in the top(1) man page. Switches "-m", "-M", and "-V", which represent sorting by memory usage, memory units detection, and version/help, respectively, have been added to these updated procps packages. (BZ#757734)

  • Previously, values shown in the "si" and "so" columns were always zero for the "m" or "M" conversion units. The evaluation has been modified to prevent losses of the arithmetic precision and zero values no longer appears in this situation. (BZ#839340)

This update also adds the following enhancement:

  • This update introduces a new enhancement in using of the "w" command. Users can switch the value shown in the FROM field to represent IP addresses instead of hostnames. This behavior can be achieved with the "-i" switch. (BZ#586742)

All users of procps are advised to upgrade to these updated packages that fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

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

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian5ppc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems5s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5ia64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5i386

Updated Packages

  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.x86_64.rpm
  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.s390x.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.ppc.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.src.rpm
  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.i386.rpm
  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.ia64.rpm
  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.ppc.rpm
  • procps-debuginfo-3.2.7-22.el5.ppc64.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.s390x.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.i386.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.ia64.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.ppc64.rpm
  • procps-3.2.7-22.el5.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information