-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 ============================================================================= FreeBSD-EN-16:06.libc Errata Notice The FreeBSD Project Topic: Performance regression in libc hash(3) Category: core Module: libc / hash(3) Announced: 2016-05-04 Credits: Bryan Drewery, Baptiste Daroussin Affects: FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE Corrected: 2016-04-13 01:54:36 UTC (stable/10, 10.3-STABLE) 2016-05-04 15:25:47 UTC (releng/10.3, 10.3-RELEASE-p2) For general information regarding FreeBSD Errata Notices and Security Advisories, including descriptions of the fields above, security branches, and the following sections, please visit . I. Background The dbopen(3) with DB_HASH allows reading and writing to database files in the hash(3) format. Examples of such files are the system master passwd and services databases in /etc. In FreeBSD 10.3 operations using dbopen(3) were fixed to always call fsync(2) on their files when writing to ensure they were consistent after a power loss. This was mostly noticeable for the user and group database files after using pw, vipw, chpass, etc. II. Problem Description The changes in FreeBSD 10.3 to use fsync(2) were improperly extended to operations that were read-only. III. Impact This could manifest as extreme slowdowns in operations that read from one of these files, such as the user database. It was especially noticeable during the use of "pkg install" since it reads from the user database. It could also incur excessive I/O writes to these files if the file system was not mounted with noatime which could lessen the lifetime of SSD. IV. Workaround No workaround is available. V. Solution Perform one of the following: 1) Upgrade your system to a supported FreeBSD stable or release / security branch (releng) dated after the correction date. 2) To update your present system via a binary patch: Systems running a RELEASE version of FreeBSD on the i386 or amd64 platforms can be updated via the freebsd-update(8) utility: # freebsd-update fetch # freebsd-update install 3) To update your present system via a source code patch: The following patches have been verified to apply to the applicable FreeBSD release branches. a) Download the relevant patch from the location below, and verify the detached PGP signature using your PGP utility. [FreeBSD 10.3] # fetch https://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/EN-16:06/libc.patch # fetch https://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/EN-16:06/libc.patch.asc # gpg --verify libc.patch.asc b) Apply the patch. Execute the following commands as root: # cd /usr/src # patch < /path/to/patch c) Recompile the operating system using buildworld and installworld as described in . Restart all daemons that use the library, or reboot the system. VI. Correction details The following list contains the correction revision numbers for each affected branch. Branch/path Revision - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- stable/10/ r297904 releng/10.3/ r299066 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To see which files were modified by a particular revision, run the following command, replacing NNNNNN with the revision number, on a machine with Subversion installed: # svn diff -cNNNNNN --summarize svn://svn.freebsd.org/base Or visit the following URL, replacing NNNNNN with the revision number: VII. References The latest revision of this Errata Notice is available at https://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-EN-16:06.libc.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJXKj2JAAoJEO1n7NZdz2rnAqUQAKQmHsqyFPwl+yva/Is8U0Z+ iuMnGAa9zp422ESLF8wczAYIQxv2wNuPAupuZGdDD5vnt8AJNEhs84xq9RW63AxM V1YQAsNzMTeP4xhGJbrLXPgS5tgB59Rwj0OmIjrbyi4rmDMVGl0Ok0XRr+L+c9KV dZhUSTmtlR005887aEoUe7Ujnqn4TljijaK/mD2YhGoE5Xkx5yOzJoO3ajCkyY61 qSFVDqKP+pGgazt9gXpf7vtj4tw+TUqCMH3lj+LF4I7QfbAATYqwXo6pPVxSdZAY D8qFR7h31Rpb7ImnSLiULGkZvV5cJrbHJQR63ty1WF6y5qur1La4EfTDDhqqkz3I hvC8PCgAu11E55TsDeFUAFibjWZZvcqoYG3taWAKc9JlOHd5+cKoXVAzGTX4a/B7 V0r5WH9AmmcodE7oRo90yFhUuv28G9T/z7a7bihaD6Cu2+3C7ez9f8cyD2x/FYJV Y7wF3Ey4faybuaXBmxrbq3aJQYPe4knfvigmLoJNbCgIutvCiDVue/BxXaZ97Zc3 RxPx7+SQo18R83u/iGgYIgs5MAsLLDphwETQhAi8ZUsSO/YVb4Od0ScCHaHC/byp CdSC7DW56wiqYYyFjAe5/MQIIv8cvNLtekiaiUhAf36DrstglbSwOTw7x2kMcguk KLNONz99Am4A/sIHhizX =p2R6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----