1.27. e2fsprogs

Updated e2fsprogs packages that fix various bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The e2fsprogs packages contain a number of utilities that create, check, modify, and correct inconsistencies in second extended (ext2) file systems. This includes e2fsck (which repairs file system inconsistencies after an unclean shutdown), mke2fs (which initializes a partition to contain an empty ext2 file system), tune2fs (which modifies file system parameters), and most of the other core ext2fs file system utilities.

This update fixes the following bugs:

* Prior to this update, a corrupted journal on an ext3 file system may not have been properly repaired by the e2fsck utility. This was caused by the fact that the utility was unable to detect or repair the problem when the journal appeared to be a sparse file, which led to a journaling failure and file system shut down. With this update, the process_journal_block() function has been adjusted to mark sparse journal as invalid, and e2fsck utility now works as expected. ( BZ#621836)

* Under certain circumstances, the blkid utility may have produced an empty output when the /etc/blkid/blkid.tab file contained multiple stale entries with the same label. Consequent to this, an attempt to check the file system or mount it may have failed, preventing the system from booting. This error has been fixed, and the underlying source code has been modified to ensure that blkid always returns the expected result. ( BZ#640584)

All users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve these issues.