[CentOS] glibc-2.5-58.el5_6.2.i686 broken?

Tue Apr 19 00:07:04 UTC 2011
Ron Blizzard <rb4centos at gmail.com>

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Tom Sorensen <tsorensen at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a known issue with one of the security updates on that
> version of glibc.
>
> That said, it's still *highly* recommended that you update. There are
> four CVEs closed by this glibc update, one of which is potentially a
> remote privilege escalation (and that one is NOT the one that is
> causing the issue).
>
> If, for some reason, you cannot update then you should seriously
> consider whether or not those systems can connect to the Internet, or
> if you should get the glibc from Scientific Linux that has the 3
> patches that do not cause an issue in the meantime.

For clarification, this bug is only known to be affecting Evolution
and Gnome-Panel, correct? If so, for most servers, the update should
not be a concern. I've updated four desktops -- the two with Intel
video chips are not affected at all. The two with nVidia chipsets and
proprietary nVidia drivers *are* affected. Since I don't use
Evolution, the "work-around" for me is to issue the "pkill
gnome-panel" command. Usually doing this once will fix it, but
sometimes it requires a couple shots.

I dual-boot into Linux Mint 10 (so I can remotely support my father
who uses Linux Mint -- I need to be able to replicate his errors when
he has them). It has a very similar issue, except, in its case, both
Nautilus and Gnome-Panel do not come up. I have to go to a tty
terminal and issue the "pkill nautilus" and "pkill gnome-panel"
commands. I didn't have this problem *until* I updated the video
driver to nVidia's proprietary one. So, again, it appears it might
have something to do with the nVidia's driver.

At any rate, there are work-arounds -- for those who use Evolution,
the SL update is probably the best. I'm kind of surprised that Red Hat
has not issued a fix yet.

-- 
RonB -- Using CentOS 5.6