Issued:
2015-07-22
Updated:
2015-07-22

RHBA-2015:1308 - strace bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

strace bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The strace utility intercepts and records the system calls that are made and received by a running process and prints a record of each system call, its arguments, and its return value to standard error output or a file. It is often used for problem diagnoses, debugging, and for instructional purposes.

The strace packages have been upgraded to upstream version 4.8, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. Among others:

  • This update adds several new command-line options: "-y" to print file descriptor paths, "-P" to filter system calls based on the file descriptor paths, and "-I" to control how interactive strace is.

  • A new command-line utility, strace-log-merge, has been added. This utility can be used to merge timestamped strace output into a single file.

  • The strace utility now uses optimized interfaces to extract data from the traced process for better performance.

  • The strace utility now provides improved support for decoding of arguments for various system calls. In addition, a number of new system calls are supported.

(BZ#919101, BZ#1056828)

This update also fixes the following bug:

  • Previously, the strace utility incorrectly handled the return value from the shmat() system call. Consequently, the return value displayed was "?" instead of the address of the attached shared memory segment. This bug has been fixed, and strace now displays the correct return value for the shmat() system calls. (BZ#877193)

Users of strace 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

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

  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.i686.rpm
  • strace-4.8-10.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • strace-4.8-10.el6.src.rpm
  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.ppc.rpm
  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.s390.rpm
  • strace32-4.8-10.el6.ppc.rpm
  • strace-4.8-10.el6.s390x.rpm
  • strace-4.8-10.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • strace-4.8-10.el6.i686.rpm
  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • strace-debuginfo-4.8-10.el6.s390x.rpm
  • strace32-4.8-10.el6.s390.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information