1.172. SysVinit

An updated SysVinit package that fixes several bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The SysVinit package contains a group of processes that control the basic functions of your system. SysVinit includes the init program, which is the first program started by the Linux kernel when the system boots. The init program then controls the starting up and shutting down of all other programs.

This update fixes the following bugs:

* Prior to this update, the command "pidof" did not return a process identifier (PID) if run as the root user and the path name began with "/". The problem is resolved in this update so that "pidof" now returns the PID as expected. (BZ#507382, BZ#589668)

* Prior to this update, the command "pidof" unexpectedly issued an error message under certain circumstances. The error message was similar to "can't get program name from /proc/[pid]/stat", or "can't read sid from /proc/[pid]/stat". This unintended behavior is corrected with this update and no longer occurs. (BZ#592956)

* Prior to this update, using the command "last" to view current and previous logins displayed a truncated username if the username was over 8 characters long. With this update, the option "-w" / "--wide" has been added to the "last" command to support wide output. (BZ#673533)

* Prior to this update, non-privileged users could have received incorrect service status information when running the command "service [service] status". The problem is fixed in this update so that after running the command, the service status information is correctly displayed along with an error message indicating that the command was run by a non-privileged user. (BZ#684881)

* Prior to this update, when a user logged in from an IPv6 host and the command "last" was used to display the IP address, the command "last" displayed an incorrect IPv4 format address, which only included the first 32 bits of the actual IPv6 address. The problem is fixed so that the command "last" now displays the correct IPv6 format address. (BZ#690939)

Users are advised to upgrade to this updated SysVinit package, which fixes these bugs.