Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:27:03 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:27:03 -0500 Received: from otter.mbay.net ([206.55.237.2]:39695 "EHLO otter.mbay.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id convert rfc822-to-8bit; Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:26:04 -0500 From: John Alvord To: Linus Torvalds Cc: "Matt D. Robinson" , Rusty Russell , , , Subject: Re: What's left over. Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 10:31:59 -0800 Message-ID: <77t2suc7q7dtjvnm7p44d43mribai1d23i@4ax.com> References:

In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.92/32.570 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1619 Lines: 37 On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 09:54:54 -0800 (PST), Linus Torvalds wrote: >Guys, why do you even bother trying to convince me? If you are right, you >will be able to convince other people, and that's the whole point of open >source. > >Being "vendor-driven" is _not_ a bad thing. It only means that _I_ am not >personally convinced. I'm only one person. It sounds to me like there needs to be L-K traffic when problems are solved using LKCD. Personally I love crash dumps... in 33 years of computing I have spent a total of 1-2 years doing nothing but enhancing and developing post-processing facilities. The true benefit is not just the "crashed here, add a null check nonsense". It is the ability to examine the whole system state. With an inboard trace table, you can even go back in time. You can look at call stacks, locks held, state of allocated memory, etc etc. If you save callstacks and time with allocated memory, you can track down storage growth problems. I have spent weeks winkling problems out of crash dumps, solving problems the developers didn't even know existed. With the right facility you can take crash dump snapshots and keep on running. It is a great tool for understanding a system. But until there is a flow of results - good quality fixes - resulting from such analysis, I can see exactly why LT is doubtful. john alvord - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/