Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 713449
sosreport truncates leading and trailing whitespace from command outputs
Last modified: 2011-12-06 13:11:09 EST
Description of problem: The sosreport utility in RHEL 6 is stripping out leading and trailing whitespace from the captured output of commands. This could lead to confusion and misreading of sos data. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): sos-2.2-8.el6.noarch How reproducible: Very Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run sosreport 2. View command output captured in report 3. Compare with actual command output Actual results: # cat free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3922400 1184348 2738052 0 6936 628912 -/+ buffers/cache: 548500 3373900 Swap: 6160376 0 6160376 Expected results: # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3922400 1096932 2825468 0 12572 642716 -/+ buffers/cache: 441644 3480756 Swap: 6160376 0 6160376 Additional information: Looks like the issue is in helpers.py line 58 in function 'sosGetCommandOutput' where it returns "stdout.strip()"
I just tracked down the changeset that introduced this upstream (it's in 1.9 but not prior releases) as I suspected there's no rationale for the change given. This seems completely bogus to me and as comment #0 indicates breaks, or at least makes confusing, many standard command's outputs (I'm surprised nobody noticed already!). I'm for reverting this upstream and in RHEL6 asap as it will also affect comparison between sos data when we do make the change. Keith, thoughts?
Since the problem described in this bug report should be resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated files, follow the link below. If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-1536.html