Re: strange CRASH_DUMP dependencies

[Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@in.ibm.com>]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 10:44:17PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 11:53:02AM +0530, Vivek Goyal wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 12:53:10AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > config CRASH_DUMP
> > > 	bool "kernel crash dumps (EXPERIMENTAL)"
> > > 	depends on EMBEDDED
> > > 	depends on EXPERIMENTAL
> > > 	depends on HIGHMEM
> > > 	help
> > > 	  Generate crash dump after being started by kexec.
> > > 
> > > Two questions:
> > > - If it has any dependencies on kexec, why isn't there a dependency?
> > 
> > crashdump has got dependency on kexec but not in the same kernel. What
> > I mean is that as of today two kernels are involved in this process. First
> > kernel is crashing kernel which should have enabled CONFIG_KEXEC and second
> > kernel (capture kernel) is one which captures the dump and should have
> > CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP enabled. Second kernel need not to have CONFIG_KEXEC
> > enabled for catpturing dump. Hence CRASH_DUMP is not directly dependent
> > on CONFIG_KEXEC.
> 
> Sounds reasonable.
> 
> > > - Is there any sane reason for the dependency on EMBEDDED?
> > > 
> > 
> > I believe this was introduced because large servers can have huge amount
> > of memory (running into Tera Bytes) and saving all that memory might not be
> > practical. Hence it was perceived that until some filtering mechanism is
> > implemented, it is more suited for small systems.
> >...
> 
> It seems you have a wrong impression of what EMBEDDED in the kernel 
> does.
> 

Yes, I misunderstood it.

Thanks
Vivek