Issued:
2013-11-20
Updated:
2013-11-20

RHBA-2013:1719 - iotop bug fix update

Synopsis

iotop bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

An updated iotop package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The iotop package provides a program with a UI similar to the "top" utility. The program watches input-output (I/O) usage information output by the Linux kernel and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes on the system.

This update fixes the following bugs:

  • Previously, the iotop utility terminated unexpectedly when it was run by a non-root user. This was because a recently-applied patch in CVE-2011-2494 made I/O statistics from the taskstats kernel subsystem accessible only to root users, and iotop did not anticipate that its "taskstats" call could fail when run by a non-root user. This update adds permission checks to iotop, and when the user does not have the necessary permissions, iotop exits with an explanation that root privileges are now required. (BZ#746240, BZ#908149)

  • Previously, the iotop utility did not handle platform strings correctly. Consequently, the iotop command could not show the I/O scheduling class and its priority ("PRIO") column on 64-bit PowerPC systems properly. With this update, the bug has been fixed so that the iotop command now shows the "PRIO" column on 64-bit PowerPC systems as expected. (BZ#826875)

  • When an invalid locale was set, the iotop utility failed to start with the following traceback error:

    locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

With this update, the underlying source code has been modified. As a result, when an invalid locale is set, the default locale is used instead and a warning about this change is returned. (BZ#849559)

Users of iotop are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which fixes these bugs.

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/site/articles/11258

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian6ppc64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6i386

Updated Packages

  • iotop-0.3.2-7.el6.src.rpm
  • iotop-0.3.2-7.el6.noarch.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information