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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:59:05 +0200
From: Bernhard Walle <bwalle@suse.de>
To: kexec@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Determine version of kernel that produced vmcore
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* Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@in.ibm.com> [2007-07-10 08:36]:
> > does anybody know a _reliable_ way to determine the version the kernel
> > that produced a vmcore file? This means not scanning for a specific
> > string or something like that which can fail on random memory.
> > 
> > Would it make sense to add a ELF PT_NOTE section in the vmcore?
> 
> To me it makes sense to append an ELF NOTE to vmcore which can uniquely
> associate that vmcore with a particular vmlinux file (Some string
> equivalent to the output of uname -a).

Well, if we embed the CONFIGFILE from makedumpfile in some magic way
we don't need it ... we'll see.

> Interesting thing is that to find version of vmlinux, you will still be
> doing <string | grep "some pattern">. Probably then we should append an
> ELF note to vmlinux file also?

Yes, that was my proposal some time ago, see
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.fastboot.general/3996
Any comments on that patch are appreciated. :)


Thanks,
   Bernhard