From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Alexey Ishchuk Subject: [RFC] Modern device mapper module makes problems for dump analysis Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2015 16:34:53 +0300 Message-ID: <565DA1FD.3010804@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Reply-To: device-mapper development Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com Errors-To: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com To: dm-devel@redhat.com Cc: Steffen Maier List-Id: dm-devel.ids Hi, in the modern device mapper Linux kernel module the data structure struct dm_table is declared more than once. One of those declarations is the real structure definition and the other are dummy definitions. This coding manner makes serious problems for the Linux kernel dump analysis with crash utility using custom EPPIC language scripts and even the dminfo built-in crash extension does not work with the dumps. The problem occurs because the crash utility tries to expose to the EPPIC language scripts a dummy structure definition that contains no required fields. I would like to get to know, why do we need more than one struct dm_table declarations in the kernel module? Is it possible to improve the device mapper kernel module code to have the only one struct dm_table declaration to allow kernel dumps to be analyzed using custom scripts? Best regards, Alexey Ishchuk