Re: [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic

[Jan Ceuleers <jan.ceuleers@computer.org>]

On 25/01/11 15:49, Tejun Heo wrote:
> I'm afraid this is gonna be something which works sometimes (or even
> more times than not) but can't ever be made reliable.  I think it
> would be better to head toward usb or other kind of early console.

Apologies in advance if this is a stupid idea, but would it be possible 
and safer to dedicate a whole device (such as a USB thumb drive or a 
memory card) to this? You could initialise the media in a certain way to 
let the kernel know that it is OK to trample on the device.

You'd have a mkpoops command (make persistent oops :-). Perhaps this 
could be a new partition table type. The kernel could either auto-detect 
such a device or be told which-one to use. It could then, upon crash and 
prior to writing to it, re-verify that the device bears the hallmarks of 
being a poops device.

Thanks, Jan