Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755056AbZKRJBW (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:01:22 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753807AbZKRJBV (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:01:21 -0500 Received: from mail-qy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.221.174]:37993 "EHLO mail-qy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753346AbZKRJBU convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:01:20 -0500 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=dzi1bod/1g3eh+OX8BvYB//+2SzpS1L91WwryFbwdcoB1siZSS6iIz+XWzh1xrdtvP xELtUnVvKcsf9Kh1f/KZd6blVq+qWdGI1P68OyKg9A1o/Gvx/wXhHQc1elkx0ldl2LYW 1Z440rI9RkaWympnJDQ0ZuUmFZ1wRU2SLaZT0= MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20091118005337.GA19374@dvomlehn-lnx2.corp.sa.net> References: <1258463404.27437.103.camel@localhost> <20091117235627.GA13469@dvomlehn-lnx2.corp.sa.net> <20091118005337.GA19374@dvomlehn-lnx2.corp.sa.net> Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:01:26 +0800 Message-ID: <2375c9f90911180101i32113c7ev85f4bbeba965fab5@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [PATCH, RFC] panic-note: Annotation from user space for panics From: =?UTF-8?Q?Am=C3=A9rico_Wang?= To: David VomLehn Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" , dedekind1@gmail.com, Marco Stornelli , Simon Kagstrom , linux-embedded@vger.kernel.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, dwm2@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mpm@selenic.com, paul.gortmaker@windriver.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 4636 Lines: 100 On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:53 AM, David VomLehn wrote: > On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 04:28:22PM -0800, Eric W. Biederman wrote: >> David VomLehn writes: >> >> > On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:45:43AM -0500, Eric W. Biederman wrote: >> > ... >> >> Why not use the kdump hook?  If you handle a kernel panic that way >> >> you get enhanced reliability and full user space support.  All in a hook >> >> that is already present and already works. > ... >> > 1. In what ways would this be better than, say, a panic_notifier? >> >> A couple of ways. >> >> - You are doing the work in a known good kernel instead of the kernel >>   that just paniced for some unknown reason. >> - All of the control logic is in user space (not the kernel) so you can >>   potentially do something as simple as "date >> logfile" to get the >>   date. > > I think I see better what you're suggesting--passing the info to a kdump > kernel and having it do whatever it wants. I don't think I want to do this, > but I haven't used any of the kexec() stuff, so I may be missing the point. > Some more context: > > My application is an embedded one, and one of the big things I need to do > after a failure is to bring up a fully functional kernel ASAP. Once I have > that kernel, I process all of the crash data in user space concurrently with > running my main application. Because I'm embedded, I'm very limited in how > much crash data I can save over a reboot, how much I can store, and how > much I can send to a central collection point. This is good, since it doesn't > take up a lot of resources, but core dumps are out of the question. I think the problem of kdump is that it uses much memory to hold the core, i.e. /proc/vmcore, and no way to free it unless using another reboot. This is why Fedora only does some data-collection in the second reboot after crash, and then reboots. I got an idea many days ago, that is providing a way to "delete" /proc/vmcore in the second reboot, so that we can have enough memory to continue without another reboot. I am not sure if Eric likes this? Eric? > > As I understand kdump, I would also need to have a second kernel in memory > to do the kdump work. It wouldn't need to be as big is the kernel that > failed, but it would still require a significant amount of memory. On an > embedded system, the idle memory may be a luxury we can't afford. You can use only one kernel, as long as it is relocatable. > > I think this makes a kdump-based solution difficult, but if it can meet > my requirements, I'd much rather use it (I've been following kdump since > it's inception quite a few years ago, but it hasn't seemed a good match > for embedded Linux). Does this still sound like a good match? What do you think about my idea above? If we had that, would kdump meet your requirements? > >> > 2. Where would you suggest tying in? (Particularly since not all architectures >> >    currently support kdump) >> >> No changes are needed kernel side.  You just need an appropriate kernel and >> initrd for your purpose. > > I think I must still be missing something. I have dynamic data that I want > to preserve as I reboot from a failed kernel to a fresh new kernel. By > the time the fresh kernel starts init, the dynamic data (IP addresses, MAC > addresses) has been re-written with new values. This is why I'm trying to > preserve, but I may be running without disk or flash. This patch doesn't > preserve the data, but it gets it into the kernel so that it can be > preserved. At present, I'm preserving the data in a panic_notifier function, > but I am not wedded to that. At present, the data will be copied to a > section of memory retained across boots, but I know others will want to > write to flash. > I believe you can get everything from /proc/vmcore, if you use kexec, after crash, with some tools like 'crash'. >> All of the interesting architectures support kexec, and if an >> architecture doesn't it isn't hard to add.  The architecture specific >> part is very simple.  A pain to debug initially but very simple. > > I use MIPS processors, and it looks like it is supported. So long as it's > stable, I'm happy to use it. MIPS seems to have some kexec() support, but after looking at arch/mips/kernel/machine_kexec.c, maybe the support is still broken? But anyway, you are welcome to work on it. :) -- 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/