From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964892AbWDHLNF (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Apr 2006 07:13:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S964900AbWDHLNF (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Apr 2006 07:13:05 -0400 Received: from anchor-post-34.mail.demon.net ([194.217.242.92]:36876 "EHLO anchor-post-34.mail.demon.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964892AbWDHLNE (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Apr 2006 07:13:04 -0400 Message-ID: <44379AB8.6050808@superbug.co.uk> Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:12:56 +0100 From: James Courtier-Dutton User-Agent: Mail/News 1.5 (X11/20060405) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux list Subject: Black box flight recorder for Linux Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi, I have had an idea for a black box flight recorder type feature for Linux. Before I try to implement it, I just wish to ask here if anyone has already tried it, and whether the idea works or not. Description for feature: Stamp the dmesg output on RAM somewhere, so that after a reset (reset button pressed, not power off), the RAM can be read and details of oopses etc. can be read. Now, the question I have is, if I write values to RAM, do any of those values survive a reset? If any did survive, one could use them to store oops output in. I am currently only interested in Intel CPU and AMD CPU based motherboards. If only some values survived, one could use some sort of redundant encoding so the good values could be recovered. The main advantage of something like this would be for newer motherboards that are around now that don't have a serial port. If no one has tried this, I will spend some time testing. James