Issued:

2014-10-13

Updated:

2014-10-13

RHBA-2014:1483 - numactl bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

numactl bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The numactl packages add simple Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) policy support. It consists of the numactl program to run other programs with a specific NUMA policy, and the libnuma library to perform allocations with NUMA policy in applications.

The numactl packages have been upgraded to upstream version 2.0.9, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. (BZ#1017048)

This update also fixes the following bugs:

• Prior to this update, the numa_parse_cpustring() function added an unallowed CPU into its bitmask. As a consequence, only the bits the user has access to were set. Consequently, every time the function was used led to different outcomes. With this update, the numa_parse_cpustring() code sets all bits in the "cpustring" argument regardless of current task's CPU mask, and the aforementioned scenario no longer occurs. (BZ#812462)

• Previously, the compiler was enforcing libnuma to provide a constant within the "char*" parameter, which led to the following warning message being returned:

  testconst.c:10:45: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’ [-Wwrite-strings]

The underlying source code has been fixed so that the string is handled as a constant, and the user no longer receives warning messages. (BZ#819133)

• Previously, when the user set the affinity of the shell to be a subset of available CPUs and then attempted to use the numactl utility to bind to something absent from that affinity mask, the attempt failed. An upstream patch has been applied to fix this bug, and the numactl environment has been extended so that the user can choose whether to allow for the affinity mask to determine available CPUs or not. (BZ#873456)

• Due to incompatibilities emerging after the latest numactl packages update, virsh processes terminated unexpectedly when any virsh command was run. This bug has been fixed, and the virsh commands now work correctly. (BZ#1100134)

Users of numactl 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/site/articles/11258

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• numactl-devel-2.0.9-2.el6.i686.rpm
• numactl-devel-2.0.9-2.el6.x86_64.rpm
• numactl-2.0.9-2.el6.x86_64.rpm
• numactl-2.0.9-2.el6.src.rpm
• numactl-devel-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc.rpm
• numactl-devel-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc64.rpm
• numactl-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc.rpm
• numactl-debuginfo-2.0.9-2.el6.i686.rpm
• numactl-2.0.9-2.el6.i686.rpm
• numactl-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc64.rpm
• numactl-debuginfo-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc.rpm
• numactl-debuginfo-2.0.9-2.el6.x86_64.rpm
• numactl-debuginfo-2.0.9-2.el6.ppc64.rpm

Fixes

(none)

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.