Re: [PATCH] panic.c: export panic_on_oops

Dirk Hohndel
2009-10-12T19:18:47Z

Here's what I get for traveling and not reading mail for two days...

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 11:45 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> > * Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Perhaps oops_enter() is a good place to mark the start of the log, and
> > > flush it within oops_exit().
> >
> > Simplest would be to do the last 2K in oops_exit()? That gives the oops,
> > and the history leading up to it. Since the blocking is 2K, the extra
> > log output is for free.
>
> I agree, except I don't think it should be fixed to 2k.
>
> We should just dump as much as is "appropriate" for the dump device. It
> might be the last 2kB, it might be 8kB, it might be 64kB. We don't know,
> we don't care. The device may have its own per-device limits. Any extra
> data we get from before the oops is just gravy (often there might be
> interestign warning messages leadign up to the dump), and if the oops is
> too big for the dump device, it's not something we can do anything about
> anyway.

I'm working on something different but related - also using the ring
buffer and just getting as much from its tail as I am able to conserve.

The approach in my case is to write a 2D bar code to the screen and have
the user take a picture / submit the picture to kerneloops.org where it
then gets decoded back into the oops message. This is intended for
situations where you don't have access to other storage / network - or
where a picture of the screen is actually the easiest way to get to the
information.

Right now the project is slightly stalled as I am running into an
unexpected project on the decode side, but I'd love to make sure that
the core changes I'm doing integrate cleanly with this project...

>
> So the logic should literally be something like this:
>
> - kernel/printk.c:
>
> void dump_kmsg(void)
> {
> unsigned long len = ACCESS_ONCE(log_end);
> struct dump_device *dump;
> const char *s1, *s2;
> unsigned long l1, l2;
>
> s1 = "";
> l1 = 0;
> s2 = log_buf;
> l2 = len;
>
> /* Have we rotated around the circular buffer? */
> if (len > log_buf_len) {
> unsigned long pos = (len & LOG_BUF_MASK);
>
> s1 = log_buf + pos;
> l1 = log_buf_len - pos;
>
> s2 = log_buf;
> l2 = pos;
> }
>
> list_for_each_entry (dump, dump_list, list) {
> dump->fn(s1, l1, s2, l2);
> }
> }
>
> ie we just always give the whole buffer (as two "sections", since it's a
> circular buffer) to the dumper, and then the dumper can decide how much of
> those buffers it is able to dump sanely.

That's pretty close to what I do - only in my case the information then
doesn't get written to a device but instead gets compressed, encoded and
displayed on the framebuffer...

/D

--
Dirk Hohndel
Intel Open Source Technology Center