Thread (8 messages) 8 messages, 3 authors, 2009-11-27

Re: [PATCH] Reserve memory for kdump kernel within RMO region

From: Simon Horman <horms@verge.net.au>
Date: 2009-11-27 11:52:00
Also in: kexec

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 02:05:46PM +0530, M. Mohan Kumar wrote:
On 11/27/2009 12:56 AM, Bernhard Walle wrote:
quoted
M. Mohan Kumar schrieb:
quoted
On 11/26/2009 12:22 AM, Bernhard Walle wrote:
quoted
M. Mohan Kumar schrieb:
quoted
Reserve memory for kdump kernel within RMO region

When the kernel size exceeds 32MB(observed with some distros), memory
for kdump kernel can not be reserved as kdump kernel base is assumed to
be 32MB always. When the kernel has CONFIG_RELOCATABLE option enabled,
provide the feature to reserve the memory for kdump kernel anywhere in
the RMO region.
Hi Bernhard,
quoted
Correct me if I'm wrong, but: CONFIG_RELOCATABLE is for the kernel that
gets loaded as crashkernel, not for the kernel that loads the
crashkernel. So it would be perfectly fine that a kernel that has not
CONFIG_RELOCATABLE set would load another kernel that has
CONFIG_RELOCATABLE set on an address != 32 M.
No, with relocatable option, the same kernel is used as both production
and kdump kernel.
Can be, but it's not strictly necessary. It depends what userland does.
Especially it's possible that a non-relocatable, self-compiled kernel
loads a relocatable distribution kernel as capture kernel.
I don't understand why a non-relocatable kernel will use relocatable
kernel for capturing kdump kernel. The idea for relocatable kernel
is to avoid using two different kernels to capture kernel dump.
True, but that doesn't necessarily mean that using a relocatable
kdump kernel is required. Well, hopefully not.
quoted
Also, it would make sense to make the behaviour symmetric across
platforms. Currently we have:

 - x86 and ia64: Without offset on command line, use any offset
                 With offset on command line, use that offset and fail
                 if no memory is available at that offset.
 - ppc64: Always use 32M and ignore the offset.

If your patch gets applied, we have:

 - ppc64: With CONFIG_RELOCATABLE, use any offset
          With offset on command

I don't see why the behaviour on ppc64 should be completely different.

Having maintained kdump for SUSE for x86, ia64 and partly ppc64 in the
past, I always felt that ppc64 is more different from x86 than ia64 is
from x86. That's one more step into that direction without a technical
reason.
Also with the crashkernel=auto parameter (patches are not yet
merged), the crashkernel base (offset) by default would be 32MB. In
this case if a kernel passed with crashkernel=auto and if the first
kernel size exceeds 32MB, memory for kdump kernel will always fail.
quoted
Having that all said: If your patch gets in mainline kernel, than we
should change the behaviour also for x86 and ia64.



Regards,
Bernhard

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