Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 00/04] Kexec / Kdump: Release 20061122 (xen-unstable-12502)

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Magnus,

On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 16:10 +0900, Magnus Damm wrote:
> Here comes a new version of the Kexec / Kdump patches for x86 Xen. Not much
> has changed since last release, just a minor fix for kdump on x86_64. 
> 
> Patches to make kexec-tools Xen aware have recently been sent to the fastboot
> list. These patches will be merged in the kexec-tools-testing tree in the 
> near future.

I've taken these patches out for a spin. They look pretty good. I've got
a couple of comments.

Firstly the patches break native kernel compile. You add usages of
kexec_page_to_pfn() and friends to kernel/kexec.c but only include
kexec-xen.h ifdef CONFIG_XEN. I fixed it with by removing the ifdef but
the preferred way would be to move the native definitions of kexec_*
into include/asm-i386/kexec.h and make a xen specific copy in
include/asm-i386/mach-xen/asm/kexec.h with the xen versions patched in.
Alternatively you could just merge kexec-xen.h into kexec.h.

My second comment is WRT to the ELF notes which you add to the kdump.
You include a standard PRSTATUS core ELF note per physical CPU but there
is some useful physical processor state which is not included in this
structure -- most importantly CR3.

Since the amount of physical CPU state which is not already included in
PRSTATUS is pretty small I think you could just include the whole lot in
a Xen specific note per PCPU. I'd basically include anything which is in
a Xen panic/oops message but not in PRSTATUS, that's C[0,2,3,4].
Including the debug registers might be handy too. If there was some
standard extended PRSTATUS note format for these extra things we could
use that would be even better but I don't know of one (but then I don't
really know about these things ;-)).

You also store dom0's pfn_to_mfn_frame_list_list in a Xen specific note.
What is that used for? Given a Xen symbol table it should be possible to
locate the shared info for any domain via the xen mappings and hence
find the p2m table that way. m2p is at a known virtual address already.

The contents of the h/v taint bitmap would be another interesting thing
to include in the Xen note.

Cheers,
Ian.


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