- Issued:
- 2013-01-07
- Updated:
- 2013-01-07
RHEA-2013:0031 - crontabs enhancement update
Synopsis
crontabs enhancement update
Type/Severity
Product Enhancement Advisory
Topic
An updated crontabs package that adds one enhancement is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
Description
The crontabs package contains root crontab files and directories. Crontab files are used to schedule jobs to be executed by the cron daemon, such as cronie. Crontabs handles a basic system function so it should be installed on your system.
This update adds the following enhancement:
- The cron daemon had no mechanism to manage cron job rescheduling in a shared environment selectively. Therefore, when a large number of hosts attempted to execute their jobs at the same time, a network or server running the jobs could become overloaded. This update modifies the run-parts script to provide cron job randomization. When cron job randomization is enabled and configured, and a cron job fails to be executed at the scheduled time, cron retries to execute jobs after a random interval. The network and server overloading due to too many simultaneous cron jobs can no longer occur. (BZ#532157)
All users of crontabs are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which adds 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
| Product | Version | Arch |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian | 5 | ppc |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems | 5 | s390x |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation | 5 | x86_64 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation | 5 | i386 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server | 5 | x86_64 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server | 5 | ia64 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server | 5 | i386 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI | 5 | x86_64 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI | 5 | i386 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop | 5 | x86_64 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop | 5 | i386 |
Updated Packages
- crontabs-1.10-11.el5.noarch.rpm
- crontabs-1.10-11.el5.src.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.