1.12. busybox

Updated busybox packages that fix multiple bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

busybox is a single binary that includes versions of a large number of system commands, including a shell. This can be very useful for recovering from certain types of system failures, particularly those involving broken shared libraries.

[Updated 2 June 2011] This update fixes a regression in the original fix in which the msh applet was incorrectly executing while loop with empty body. It never exited the loop even if the loop condition was false. With this update, this loop construct works correctly. (BZ#708942)

The original errata update also fixed the following three bugs:

* The grep applet was ignoring the "-i" command line option if the "-F" option was also used. Consequent to this, the "grep -iF" command incorrectly performed a case sensitive search instead of the case insensitive one. This update resolves the problem by ensuring that this combination of command line options works as expected. (BZ#608927)

* Previously, the msh applet had a severely limited depth of shell source operations (that is, the ". FILE" built-in commands). Under certain circumstances, this may have caused it to terminate unexpectedly with the "Shell input nested too deeply" error message. With this update, the maximum number of nested source operations is limited only by the number of available file descriptors and the amount of available memory. (BZ#556845)

* Prior to this update, the msh applet had a limited buffer for the storage of the results of a process substitution. Consequent to this, an attempt to execute certain constructs (for example, `cat FILE` with a file larger than 15KB) could cause it to exit with the "out of string space" error message. With this update, the buffer size is now limited only by the amount of available memory. (BZ#678701)

Users are advised to upgrade to these updated busybox packages, which fix these bugs.