[Techtalk] Bug when upgrading glibc @ RH8

[Magni Onsoien]

Just wanted to share a not-very-funny-bug with you...
We have a number of servers running RedHat 8 in a hosting fascility in
Oslo, about 500 km from here. Yesterday we happily applied the
glibc-errata from redhat - and today we couldn't log in via sshd (to
investigate why the mail that was supposed to go via those servers
didn't do that).

Oups.

There is a bug in the latest glibc-errata for RedHat 8,
RHSA-2003:089-08, glibc-2.3.2-4.80, breaking sshd and probably also
sendmail and postfix (or some other part of our mailsystem).

The fix is to restart the service - but unless you remained logged in
after updating glibc (I don't _think_ the ssh-connections died after
the update) - you'll either need physical access to the server to do
that, or you need to be able to do it remote. In our case we were very
happy about our powerswitch and also the possibility of performing
reboots via RedHat Network :-)

So those of you running RedHat 8: don't update the glibc-package unless
you are able - and prepared - to restart a lot of services manually 
afterwards... (I expect RedHat to come with a new update soon, at least
one with a warning about what will break if they can't fix this
otherwise.)



Magni, returning to her coffee cup on this very early Friday morning.
-- 
sash is very good for you.