Re: [RFC] Linux Kernel Dump Test Module

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006 19:23:29 +0530
Ankita Garg <ankita@in.ibm.com> wrote:

> Please find below a patch for a simple module to test Linux Kernel Dump 
> mechanism. This module uses jprobes to install/activate pre-defined crash
> points. At different crash points, various types of crashing scenarios 
> are created like a BUG(), panic(), exception, recursive loop and stack 
> overflow. The user can activate a crash point with specific type by
> providing parameters at the time of module insertion. Please see the file
> header for usage information. The module is based on the Linux Kernel
> Dump Test Tool by Fernando <http://lkdtt.sourceforge.net>.
> 
> This module could be merged with mainline. Jprobes is used here so that the 
> context in which crash point is hit, could be maintained. This implements
> all the crash points as done by LKDTT except the one in the middle of 
> tasklet_action(). 

"could be merged with mainline": why "could"?  What would be the
disadvantages of doing this?

I think having test code like this in mainline is a good idea, particularly
for a subsystem like [kj]probes.

It's a bit regrettable that the code "knows" about particular not-exported,
arch-specific core kernel functions, but I guess those don't change very
often, so we won't be forever patching this module.