Issued:
2013-02-20
Updated:
2013-02-20

RHBA-2013:0384 - powerpc-utils bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

powerpc-utils bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated powerpc-utils packages that fix multiple bugs and add various enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The powerpc-utils packages provide various utilities for the PowerPC platform.

The powerpc-utils packages have been upgraded to upstream version 1.2.13, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version, including support for physical Ethernet devices. The snap and hvcsadmin scripts now use the "use strict" construct to prevent a Perl interpreter from allowing usage of unsafe constructs, such as symbolic references, undeclared variables and using strings without quotation marks. The snap script now also enables to add a hostname and timestamp to its output file name by specifying the "-t" option. (BZ#822656)

Additionally, this update fixes the following bugs:

  • The bootlist command is used to read and modify the bootlist in NVRAM so that a system can boot from the correct device. Previously, when using a multipath device as a boot device, the bootlist command used its Linux logical name. However, Open Firmware, which is used on IBM POWER systems, is unable to parse Linux logical names. Therefore booting from a multipath device on IBM POWER systems failed. This update modifies the bootlist script so that bootlist now supports multipath devices as a parameter. The script converts Linux logical names of multipath devices to the path names that are parsable by Open Firmware. Booting from a multipath device on IBM POWER systems now succeeds as expected.
    (BZ#739699)

  • Previously, the "hvcsadmin -status" command did not provide any output if no IBM hypervisor virtual console server (hvcs) adapters were found on the system. This update corrects the hvcsadmin script so that when executing the "hvcsadmin -status" command, the user can now see a message indicating that no hvcs adapters were found. (BZ#857841)

  • The lsdevinfo script did not previously take into consideration the "status" attribute for Ethernet devices. This attribute is essential for the End-to-End Virtual Device View feature so the feature did not work without it. This update modifies lsdevinfo so the script now also checks the status of Ethernet devices and sets the status attribute to 1. The End-to-End Virtual Device View feature now works as expected. (BZ#870212)

All users of powerpc-utils are advised to 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

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian6ppc64

Updated Packages

  • powerpc-utils-1.2.13-2.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • powerpc-utils-1.2.13-2.el6.src.rpm
  • powerpc-utils-debuginfo-1.2.13-2.el6.ppc64.rpm

Fixes

(none)

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information