Chapter 8. Updated Packages
8.1. abrt
Updated abrt, libreport, and btparser packages that fix several bugs and add two enhancements are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
ABRT is a tool to help users to detect defects in applications and to create a problem report with all the information needed by a maintainer to fix it. ABRT uses a plug-in system to extend its functionality.
The libreport libraries provide an API for reporting different problems in applications to different bug targets like Bugzilla, ftp, and trac.
The btparser utility is a backtrace parser and analyzer library, which works with backtraces produced by the GNU Project Debugger. It can parse a text file with a backtrace to a tree of C structures, allowing to analyze the threads and frames of the backtrace and process them.
Bug Fixes
- BZ#854668
- If the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf file was modified so that the "DumpLocation" and "WatchCrashdumpArchiveDir" variables referred to the same directory, the ABRT utility tried to process the files in that directory as both archives and new problem directories, which led to unpredictable results. With this update, ABRT refuses to start if such misconfiguration is detected.
- BZ#896090
- While creating a case, the reporter-rhtsupport utility sent the operation system (OS) version value which RHT customer center server did not accept. Consequently, a new case failed to be created and an error message was returned. With this update, suffixes such as "Beta" in the OS version value are not stripped, RHT customer center server accepts the version value, and a case is created.
- BZ#952773
- Prior to this update, the abrt-watch-log and abrt-dump-oops utilities were creating too many new problem directories when a kernel error occurred periodically. As a consequence, the user was flooded with problem reports and the /var partition could overflow. To fix this bug, abrt-dump-oops has been changed to ignore all additional problems for a few minutes after it sees 5 or more of them. As a result, the user is not flooded with problem reports.
Enhancements
- BZ#952704
- The Red Hat Support tool required an API for querying crashes caught by ABRT. With this update, python API for ABRT has been provided and it is now possible to use python API to query bugs caught by ABRT.
- BZ#961231
- There is a high probability that users who do not use the graphical environment (headless systems) will miss the problems detected by the ABRT utility. When the user installs the abrt-console-notification packages, they now see a warning message in the console regarding new problems detected since the last login.
All users of abrt, libreport and btparser are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add these enhancements.
