On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 06:29:21PM -0700, Uday Shankar wrote:
Currently, netconsole has two methods of configuration - module
parameter and configfs. The former interface allows for netconsole
activation earlier during boot (by specifying the module parameter on
the kernel command line), so it is preferred for debugging issues which
arise before userspace is up/the configfs interface can be used. The
module parameter syntax requires specifying the egress interface name.
This requirement makes it hard to use for a couple reasons:
- The egress interface name can be hard or impossible to predict. For
example, installing a new network card in a system can change the
interface names assigned by the kernel.
- When constructing the module parameter, one may have trouble
determining the original (kernel-assigned) name of the interface
(which is the name that should be given to netconsole) if some stable
interface naming scheme is in effect. A human can usually look at
kernel logs to determine the original name, but this is very painful
if automation is constructing the parameter.
For these reasons, allow selection of the egress interface via MAC
address when configuring netconsole using the module parameter. Update
the netconsole documentation with an example of the new syntax.
Selection of egress interface by MAC address via configfs is far less
interesting (since when this interface can be used, one should be able
to easily convert between MAC address and interface name), so it is left
unimplemented.
Signed-off-by: Uday Shankar <redacted>
Reviewed-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Tested-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Reviewed-by: Simon Horman <horms@kernel.org>