Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1764085AbXEYRV7 (ORCPT ); Fri, 25 May 2007 13:21:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1762158AbXEYRVv (ORCPT ); Fri, 25 May 2007 13:21:51 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.13]:55926 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752758AbXEYRVt (ORCPT ); Fri, 25 May 2007 13:21:49 -0400 Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 10:19:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Alan Cox cc: Chris Newport , Ingo Molnar , Christoph Lameter , Michal Piotrowski , Andrew Morton , LKML , "Cherwin R. Nooitmeer" , linux-pcmcia@lists.infradead.org, Robert de Rooy , Alan Cox , Tejun Heo , sparclinux@vger.kernel.org, David Miller , Mikael Pettersson , linux1394-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Stefan Richter , Kristian H?gsberg , linux-pm@lists.linux-foundation.org, "Rafael J. Wysocki" , Pavel Machek , Marcus Better , Andrey Borzenkov , linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Greg Kroah-Hartman Subject: Re: [2/3] 2.6.22-rc2: known regressions v2 In-Reply-To: <20070525180304.2cc4dae0@the-village.bc.nu> Message-ID: References: <46558708.2040803@googlemail.com> <46559B54.80106@googlemail.com> <20070524193740.GA6787@elte.hu> <20070525101105.GA9268@elte.hu> <4656CE39.8050800@netunix.com> <20070525180304.2cc4dae0@the-village.bc.nu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1919 Lines: 48 On Fri, 25 May 2007, Alan Cox wrote: > > There is an additional factor - dumps contain data which variously is - > copyright third parties, protected by privacy laws, just personally > private, security sensitive (eg browser history) and so on. Yes. I'm sure we've had one or two crashdumps over the years that have actually clarified a bug. But I seriously doubt it is more than a handful. > Diskdump (and even more so netdump) are useful in the hands of a > developer crashing their own box just like kgdb, but not in the the > normal and rational end user response of "its broken, hit reset" Amen, brother. Even for developers, I suspect a _lot_ of people end up doing "ok, let's bisect this" or some other method to narrow it down to a specific case, and then staring at the source code once they get to that point. At least I hope so. Even in user space, you should generally use gdb to get a traceback and perhaps variable information, and then go look at the source code. Yes, dumps can (in theory) be useful for one-off issues, but I doubt many people have ever been able to get anything much more out of them than from a kernel "oops" message. For developers, I can heartily recommend the firewire-based remote debug facilities that the PowerPC people use. I've used it once or twice, and it is fairly simple and much better than a full dump (adn it works even when the CPU is totally locked up, which is the best reason for using it). But 99% of the time, the problem doesn't happen on a developer machine, and even if it does, 90% of the time you really just want the traceback and register info that you get out of an oops. Linus - 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/