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From: Stephen Boyd <sboyd@codeaurora.org>
To: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>,
	"Fabio M. Di Nitto" <fdinitto@redhat.com>,
	Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
	Olaf Hering <olaf@aepfle.de>,
	Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>,
	Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@linux.intel.com>,
	Yinghai LU <yinghai@kernel.org>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/5] Persist printk buffer across reboots.
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:32:32 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4F5F0620.2020404@codeaurora.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1331617001-20906-1-git-send-email-apenwarr@gmail.com>

On 3/12/2012 10:36 PM, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> The last patch in this series implements a new CONFIG_PRINTK_PERSIST option
> that, when enabled, puts the printk buffer in a well-defined memory location
> so that we can keep appending to it after a reboot.  The upshot is that,
> even after a kernel panic or non-panic hard lockup, on the next boot
> userspace will be able to grab the kernel messages leading up to it.  It
> could then upload the messages to a server (for example) to keep crash
> statistics.
>
> The preceding patches in the series are mostly just things I fixed up while
> working on that patch.
>
> Some notes:
>
> - I'm not totally sure of the locking or portability issues when calling
>    memblock or bootmem.  This all happens really early, and I *think*
>    interrupts are still disabled at that time, so it's probably okay.
>
> - Tested this version on x86 (kvm) and it works with soft reboot (ie. reboot
>    -f).  Since some BIOSes wipe the memory during boot, you might not have
>    any luck.  It should be great on many embedded systems, though, including
>    the MIPS system I've tested a variant of this patch on.  (Our MIPS build
>    is based on a slightly older kernel so it's not 100% the same, but I think
>    this should behave identically.)
>
> - The way we choose a well-defined memory location is slightly suspicious
>    (we just count down from the top of the address space) but I've tested it
>    pretty carefully, and it seems to be okay.
>
> - In printk.c with CONFIG_PRINTK_PERSIST set, we're #defining words like
>    log_end.  It might be cleaner to replace all instances of log_end with
>    LOG_END to make this more clear.  This is also the reason the struct
>    logbits members start with _: because otherwise they conflict with the
>    macro.  Suggestions welcome.

Android has something similar called ram_console (see 
staging/android/ram_console.c). The console is dumped to a ram buffer 
that is reserved very early in platform setup code. Then when the phone 
reboots you can cat /proc/last_kmsg to get the previous kernel message 
for debugging. Can you use that code?

-- 
Sent by an employee of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.
The Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of the Code Aurora Forum.

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2012-03-13  8:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-03-13  5:36 [PATCH 0/5] Persist printk buffer across reboots Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:36 ` [PATCH 1/5] mm: bootmem: BUG() if you try to allocate bootmem too late Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:36 ` [PATCH 2/5] mm: bootmem: it's okay to reserve_bootmem an invalid address Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:36 ` [PATCH 3/5] mm: nobootmem: implement reserve_bootmem() in terms of memblock Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:36 ` [PATCH 4/5] printk: use alloc_bootmem() instead of memblock_alloc() Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  6:13   ` Yinghai Lu
2012-03-13  6:40     ` Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  8:26       ` Ingo Molnar
2012-03-13 21:50       ` Yinghai Lu
2012-03-14  2:23         ` Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:36 ` [PATCH 5/5] printk: CONFIG_PRINTK_PERSIST: persist printk buffer across reboots Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  5:53 ` [PATCH 0/5] Persist " David Miller
2012-03-13  6:00   ` Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  6:50     ` David Miller
2012-03-13  7:14       ` Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  7:18         ` David Miller
2012-03-13  8:10           ` Avery Pennarun
2012-03-13  8:16             ` David Miller
2012-03-13 13:50   ` Peter Zijlstra
2012-03-14  1:57     ` Daniel Walker
2012-03-13  8:32 ` Stephen Boyd [this message]
2012-03-13 17:08 ` Daniel Walker
2012-03-13 22:10   ` Andrew Morton
2012-03-14  2:19     ` Daniel Walker
2012-03-15 22:10       ` Seiji Aguchi
2012-03-14  2:21     ` Avery Pennarun

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