Red Hat ENTERPRISE 5.4 RELEASE NOTES, Manual

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RHBA-2009:1282: bug fix update
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All users of vsftpd are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves this issue.
1.237.2. RHBA-2009:1282: bug fix update
A vsftpd update that increases the maximum username length and fixes several bugs is now available.
The vsftpd package deploys the Very Secure File Transfer Protocol daemon. This daemon enables
secure and fast FTP service on Unix-like systems, providing SSL encryption, IPv6, bandwidth
throttling, PAM integration, virtual users, virtual IPs and per-user/per-IP configuration.
This update applies the following bug fixes:
• in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the default value for the 'background' option was changed to 'NO'.
This revealed a race condition in the way vsftpd processed signals whenever child processes were
forked. As a result of this race condition, attempts to run vsftpd could fail without returning an error
code if another FTP service was also running. In this situation, a user would not be notified that
vsftpd failed to run. This update implements extra routines for signal handling that fixes the race
condition, ensuring that vsftpd returns a proper error code whenever it fails to start. (
BZ#236707
1786
)
• the init script for this update is now POSIX-compliant. This corrects a bug that could cause vsftpd to
incorrectly return a zero exit code when it failed to start. (
BZ#431451
1787
)
• a bug in the dependencies between vsftpd parent and child processes allowed those child
processes to run even though their parent process was already terminated. As such, terminating
the vsftpd service did not reliably stop all FTP connections initiated by vsftpd, which could pose
a security risk. This update fixes the child-parent process dependency bug by adding several
functions that terminate all vsftpd child processes whenever their parent process is stopped.
(
BZ#441485
1788
)
• a bug caused the vsftpd daemon to not properly shut down SSL (Secure Socket Layer) data
connections, which led to interoperability problems between the vsftpd daemon and client programs
such as FileZilla. This has been fixed in this update so that vsftpd no longer causes problems with
client applications. (
BZ#459607
1789
)
• in previous versions of vsftpd, /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf specified /var/log/vsftpd.log as its default
log file. However, this was different from the specified default log file (i.e. /var/log/xferlog) in /etc/
logrotate.d/vsftpd.log. This prevented the logrotate script from finding -- and consequently, rotating
-- the vsftpd log file, resulting in an unnecessarily large vsftpd log. This update corrects this issue by
specifying /var/log/xferlog as its default log file in /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf, which enables log rotation
on vsftpd log files. (
BZ#460067
1790
)
• this update also fixes several typographical errors in the documentation of some parameters in the
vsftpd man page. (
BZ#478526
1791
)
• vsftpd cannot locate usernames specified by the chown_username parameter if the username
is trailed by whitespace. This update contains a workaround that trims trailing whitespaces from
username values of chown_username. (
BZ#486259
1792
)
• the maximum username length is now 128 characters. In previous versions, the maximum
username was only 32 characters. (
BZ#486524
1793
)
• the DNS reverse lookup feature was implemented without any way to disable it. This update
contains the parameter 'reverse_lookup_enable', which allows users to enable or disable the DNS
reverse lookup functionality. (
BZ#498548
1794
)