Re: [PATCH] kexec: Export memory sections virtual addresses to vmcoreinfo

Dave Young
2016-10-11T08:19:33Z

On 10/11/16 at 03:41pm, Baoquan He wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> Thanks a lot for your reviewing! Sorry for late reply.
>
> On 10/06/16 at 03:07pm, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com> writes:
> >
> > > KASLR memory randomization can randomize the base of the physical memory
> > > mapping (PAGE_OFFSET), vmalloc (VMALLOC_START) and vmemmap
> > > (VMEMMAP_START). These need be exported to VMCOREINFO so that user space
> > > utility, mainly makedumpfile can use them to identify the base of each
> > > memory section. Here using VMCOREINFO_NUMBER we can reuse the existing
> > > struct number_table in makedumpfile to import data easily.
> > >
> > > Since they are related to x86_64 only, put them into
> > > arch_crash_save_vmcoreinfo. And move the exportion of KERNEL_IMAGE_SIZE
> > > together since it's also for x86_64 only.
> >
> > *Scratches my head* I would have thought this information would have
> > better fit in the ELF header. Where it actually has a field for virtual
> > address. It also has a field for physical address, and a third field
> > for offset in the file (which is where the kdump finds these things in
> > memory aftewards).
> >
> > Why do we need need more magic vmcoreinfo to handle this?
>
> Previously in x86_64, values of PAGE_OFFSET, VMALLOC and VMEMMAP are
> fixed, makedumpfile also hard codes them.
>
> In kexec-tools, we try to get page_offset_base from /proc/kallsyms or
> search it from /proc/kcore elf header with the help of virtual address
> of symbol _stext. Then we save it into p_vaddr of kernel text program
> segment. In kdump kernel, we may assume kernel text has the biggest
> starting virtual address and search it from vmcore elf header. But I
> can't think of a way to get the starting virtual address of vmalloc and
> vmemmap which are necessary for makedumpfile analysis.
>
> So it's necessary to add them into VMCOREINFO to let makedumpfile know.

PAGE_OFFSET can be get via vaddr - paddr from elf pt_loads so only
VMALLOC_BASE and VMEMMAP_BASE is necessary..

Thanks
Dave