On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 17:29 +0530, M. Mohan Kumar wrote:

Do not inline putprops function

With the recent kexec-tools git tree, both kexec and kdump kernels hang (i.e
kexec -l and kexec -p respectively). This happened after the patch "ppc64:
cleanups" commit b43a84a31a4be6ed025c1bdef3bb1c3c12e01b16. I tried
reverting each hunk and then found out that retaining following lines in
fs2dt.c makes kexec/kdump work.

-static unsigned *dt_len; /* changed len of modified cmdline
-                           in flat device-tree */

[....]

-               dt_len = dt;

I don't have any clue why removing a unused variable would cause the kexec
kernel to hang. After further investigation, I observed that if the putprops
function is not inlined, kexec/kdump kernel would work even after removing
the above lines.

This patch directs gcc to not inline the putprops function. Now we could
invoke kexec and kdump kernels.

What compiler version are you using? Does the behaviour change if you
use a newer/older compiler? It sounds to me like there's some deeper bug
and your patch is just papering over it.

cheers