Issued:

2015-07-22

Updated:

2015-07-22

RHBA-2015:1293 - logrotate bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

logrotate bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The logrotate utility simplifies the administration of multiple log files, allowing the automatic rotation, compression, removal, and mailing of log files.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• When the logrotate utility attempted to write its status file while insufficient disk space was available, logrotate wrote only part of the status file and stopped. When the disk space became free again, and log rotate attempted to read its records, logrotate terminated unexpectedly. This bug has been fixed, and logrotate no longer crashes in the aforementioned scenario. (BZ#625034)

• Previously, the daily cronjob of logrotate redirected all error messages to the /dev/null device file, thus suppressing all the relevant information for troubleshooting. With this update, all error messages containing detailed error reports are mailed to the root user. In addition, the /etc/cron.daily/logrotate file has been marked as a configuration file in RPM. (BZ#722209)

• Previously, the /etc/cron.daily/logrotate file had incorrect permissions set. This update changes the permissions to 0700, and /etc/cron.daily/logrotate now conforms to Red Hat security policy GEN003080. (BZ#1012485)

• The logrotate utility incorrectly deleted data files alphabetically instead of based on their age when the when the "-%d-%m-%Y" date format was used. This update sorts files returned by the glob() function according to the date extension. As a result, when the aforementioned date format is used, the oldest log is now removed as expected. (BZ#1117189)

In addition, this update adds the following enhancements:

• The logrotate "olddir" directive now automatically creates a directory if it is not already present. (BZ#1125769)

• This update adds logrotate features for "size" directive parsing and "maxsize" directive. (BZ#1047899)

Users of logrotate 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.

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• logrotate-3.7.8-23.el6.x86_64.rpm
• logrotate-debuginfo-3.7.8-23.el6.ppc64.rpm
• logrotate-3.7.8-23.el6.src.rpm
• logrotate-debuginfo-3.7.8-23.el6.x86_64.rpm
• logrotate-3.7.8-23.el6.ppc64.rpm
• logrotate-debuginfo-3.7.8-23.el6.i686.rpm
• logrotate-3.7.8-23.el6.i686.rpm
• logrotate-debuginfo-3.7.8-23.el6.s390x.rpm
• logrotate-3.7.8-23.el6.s390x.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 625034
• This content is not included.BZ - 722209
• This content is not included.BZ - 984965
• This content is not included.BZ - 1012485

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at Security Contacts and Procedures.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.