kexec on panic

kexec on panic

[Denys Fedoryshchenko]

Hello,

After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with modern 
(supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 minutes 
just to pass POST tests,
one question came up to me:
Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to 
capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?

Thanks!

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Re: kexec on panic

[Petr Tesarik]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:14:02 +0200
Denys Fedoryshchenko <nuclearcat@nuclearcat.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with modern 
> (supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 minutes 
> just to pass POST tests,
> one question came up to me:
> Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to 
> capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?

No. But you can load a specially crafted panic initrd which kexec's
back to the production kernel.

HTH,
Petr T

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Re: kexec on panic

[Clif Houck]

Is it possible to kexec on demand (not panic!) into another kernel with
the idea being to avoid a reboot?

For instance, say you had Linux running in a ramdisk, and all that
ramdisk Linux did was lay down a bootable Linux image onto the main
disk, and then awaited a command to kexec to the Linux image on disk? Is
something like that possible? Would I still need to specially craft the
initrd? If so, is there any literature available on how to do that?

Thanks,
Clif Houck

On 2/10/2017 9:43 AM, Petr Tesarik wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:14:02 +0200
> Denys Fedoryshchenko <nuclearcat@nuclearcat.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with modern 
>> (supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 minutes 
>> just to pass POST tests,
>> one question came up to me:
>> Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to 
>> capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?
> 
> No. But you can load a specially crafted panic initrd which kexec's
> back to the production kernel.
> 
> HTH,
> Petr T
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kexec mailing list
> kexec@lists.infradead.org
> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/kexec
> 

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Re: kexec on panic

[Marc Milgram]

It is possible to boot into a new kernel as documented on the following 
page:

https://access.redhat.com/discussions/682993

That said, even though this is documented on a Red Hat page, Red Hat 
does not officially support it.

Marc

On 02/15/2017 12:29 PM, Clif Houck wrote:
> Is it possible to kexec on demand (not panic!) into another kernel with
> the idea being to avoid a reboot?
>
> For instance, say you had Linux running in a ramdisk, and all that
> ramdisk Linux did was lay down a bootable Linux image onto the main
> disk, and then awaited a command to kexec to the Linux image on disk? Is
> something like that possible? Would I still need to specially craft the
> initrd? If so, is there any literature available on how to do that?
>
> Thanks,
> Clif Houck
>
> On 2/10/2017 9:43 AM, Petr Tesarik wrote:
>> On Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:14:02 +0200
>> Denys Fedoryshchenko <nuclearcat@nuclearcat.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with modern
>>> (supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 minutes
>>> just to pass POST tests,
>>> one question came up to me:
>>> Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to
>>> capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?
>>
>> No. But you can load a specially crafted panic initrd which kexec's
>> back to the production kernel.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Petr T
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> kexec mailing list
>> kexec@lists.infradead.org
>> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/kexec
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> kexec@lists.infradead.org
> http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/kexec
>

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Re: kexec on panic

[Jon Masters]

Hi Denys,

On 02/10/2017 03:14 AM, Denys Fedoryshchenko wrote:

> After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with modern (supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 minutes just to pass POST tests,
> one question came up to me:
> Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?

Generally, you don't want to do this, because various platform hardware
might be in non-quiescent states (still doing DMA to random memory, etc.)
and other nastiness that means you don't want to do more than the minimal
amount in a kexec on panic (crash). We've seen no end of fun and games
even with just regular crash dumps while hardware is busily writing to
memory that it shouldn't be. An IOMMU helps, but isn't a cure-all.

Jon.


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Re: kexec on panic

[Denys Fedoryshchenko]

On 2017-02-18 09:42, Jon Masters wrote:
> Hi Denys,
> 
> On 02/10/2017 03:14 AM, Denys Fedoryshchenko wrote:
> 
>> After years of using kexec and recent unpleasant experience with 
>> modern (supposed to be blazing fast to boot) hardware that need 5-10 
>> minutes just to pass POST tests,
>> one question came up to me:
>> Is it possible anyhow to execute regular (not special "panic" one to 
>> capture crash data) kexec on panic to reduce reboot time?
> 
> Generally, you don't want to do this, because various platform hardware
> might be in non-quiescent states (still doing DMA to random memory, 
> etc.)
> and other nastiness that means you don't want to do more than the 
> minimal
> amount in a kexec on panic (crash). We've seen no end of fun and games
> even with just regular crash dumps while hardware is busily writing to
> memory that it shouldn't be. An IOMMU helps, but isn't a cure-all.
> 
> Jon.
Well, i have to try, even sometimes i am facing issues with non-booting 
hardware even on regular kexec, but having at small customer HP server 
that need almost 6 minutes to boot,
no hot-spare(and hard to do by many reasons, no spare 10G ports, cost of 
hardware and etc) and some nasty bugs that is not resolved yet - forcing 
me to search way to reduce reboot time.
If i will find way to save backtrace and reboot fast, it will help a lot 
to debug kernels with minimal downtime, if bug is reproducible only on 
live system.

What i did now, might be insanely wrong, but:
diff -Naur linux-4.9.9-vanilla/kernel/kexec_core.c 
linux-4.9.9/kernel/kexec_core.c
--- linux-4.9.9-vanilla/kernel/kexec_core.c	2017-02-09 
07:08:40.000000000 +0000
+++ linux-4.9.9/kernel/kexec_core.c	2017-02-17 12:54:49.000000000 +0000
@@ -897,6 +897,10 @@
  			machine_crash_shutdown(&fixed_regs);
  			machine_kexec(kexec_crash_image);
  		}
+		if (kexec_image) {
+		    machine_shutdown();
+		    machine_kexec(kexec_image);
+		}
  		mutex_unlock(&kexec_mutex);
  	}
  }

Then

kexec -l /mnt/flash/kernel --append="intel_idle.max_cstate=0 
processor.max_cstate=1"

and
echo c >/proc/sysrq-trigger
worked even on busy network router, but i'm not sure it will be same on 
real networking stack crash.


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