Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-26,: Re: dump device

# Re: dump device

Tigran Aivazian (tigran@veritas.com)
Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:01:05 +0100 (BST)

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On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 pnilesh@in.ibm.com wrote:

>
> Please reply to pnilesh@in.ibm.com I am not registered on the mailing
> list.
>
> Hello,
> Does Linux supports any kind of dump device ?
> When there is uncertain hang/crash can we take the memory dump to
> diagnose the problem ?
> What are the issues involved in writing such a utility ?
>
> Thank You,
>
> Nilesh

Recently Werner Almesberger wrote an excellent paper on booting Linux in
general and on i386 in particular:

ftp://icaftp.epfl.ch/pub/people/almesber/misc/ols2k-9.ps.gz

In this paper he describes a dual-kernel mechanism where a small kernel
for raking the crashdump is preloaded along with a initrd and when we
panic the preloaded stuff is verified and that kernel is launched to do
the actual coredump.

http://www.missioncriticallinux.com/technology/coredump/

I didn't know that MCL's coredump uses such an interesting idea - I
thought it was a classical attempt to either:

a) use normal device drivers anyway

or

b) add a "polling io" entry points to block device layer which would work
even if interrupt-driven mechanisms are failing

So, perhaps, one day I will try it out :)

Regards,
Tigran

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