Bug 162683

Summary:	[RHEL3 and RHEL2.1] ps command core dump
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3	Reporter:	Issue Tracker <tao>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Dave Anderson <anderson>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	3.0	CC:	dhoward, kzak, lwang, petrides, tao
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	RHSA-2006-0144	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2006-03-15 16:12:20 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	168424

Description Issue Tracker 2005-07-07 16:46:29 UTC

Escalated to Bugzilla from IssueTracker

Comment 11 Karel Zak 2005-09-14 20:50:08 UTC

This is a kernel problem. See new versions of kernel (e.g 2.6.13) -- there's
spin lock for access to task->comm and routines don't use the task->comm field
directly, but there's API (set_task_comm() and get_task_comm()).

See: linux-2.4.21/fs/proc/array.c: proc_pid_stat() where is sprintf("%s",
task->comm).

Comment 12 Karel Zak 2005-09-14 21:05:34 UTC

Note: the kernel task_struct->comm race condition causes ps core dump, because
the ps command doesn't check for format of /proc/*/stat data. A possible
workaround could be detect and ignore processes with corrupted /proc/*/stat. But
I vote for real bug fix in RHEL3 kernel :-)

Comment 13 Ernie Petrides 2005-10-04 01:33:31 UTC

This is a dup of bug 138730, but I won't yet close it as such because
of current access restrictions.  A patch to fix this has been posted
for internal review and is expected to committed to the next U7 build.

Comment 14 Ernie Petrides 2005-10-04 20:24:33 UTC

Access restrictions on bug 138730 have now been lifted.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 138730 ***

Comment 16 Ernie Petrides 2005-10-08 02:18:01 UTC

A fix for this problem has just been committed to the RHEL3 U7
patch pool this evening (in kernel version 2.4.21-37.5.EL).

Comment 17 Red Hat Bugzilla 2006-03-15 16:12:21 UTC

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2006-0144.html