Re: utrace vs. ptrace

Ingo Molnar
2006-07-13T12:49:15Z

* Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> wrote:

> On Thursday 13 July 2006 11:24, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> > > utrace enables something like 'transparent live debugging': an app
> > > crashes in your distro, a window pops up, and you can 'hand over' a
> > > debugging session to a developer you trust. Or you can instruct the
> > > system to generate a coredump. Or you can generate a shorter summary
> > > of the crash, sent to a central site.
> >
> > not to mention that utrace could be used to move most of the ELF
> > coredumping code out of the kernel. (the moment you have access to all
> > crashed threads userspace can construct its own coredump - instead of
> > having the kernel construct a coredump file) Roland's patch does not go
> > as far yet, but it could be a possible target.
>
> I'm not sure that's particularly useful (I think I would prefer to
> keep it in kernel), [...]

why would we want to keep this in the kernel? Coredumping in the kernel
is fragile, and it's nowhere near performance-critical to really live
within the kernel.

Ingo