From: "Ahmed S. Darwish" <darwish.07-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds-de/tnXTf+JLsfHDXvbKv3WD2FQJk+8+b@public.gmane.org> Cc: "Willy Tarreau" <wtarreau-Dj75qbTlC0E76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org>, "Dirk Hohndel" <hohndel-wEGCiKHe2LqWVfeAwA7xHQ@public.gmane.org>, "Frédéric Weisbecker" <fweisbec-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>, FBDEV-ML <linux-fbdev-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org>, IDE-ML <linux-ide-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org>, "Randy Dunlap" <rdunlap-/UHa2rfvQTnk1uMJSBkQmQ@public.gmane.org>, "James Bottomley" <James.Bottomley-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>, X86-ML <x86-DgEjT+Ai2ygdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>, "Ingo Molnar" <mingo-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>, "Ingo Molnar" <mingo-X9Un+BFzKDI@public.gmane.org>, "Jeff Garzik" <jgarzik-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>, "Vivek Goyal" <vgoyal-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>, "Peter Zijlstra" <a.p.zijlstra-/NLkJaSkS4VmR6Xm/wNWPw@public.gmane.org>, Dirk.Hohndel-ral2JQCrhuEAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org, "Borislav Petkov" <bp-Gina5bIWoIWzQB+pC5nmwQ@public.gmane.org>, "Dave Jones" <davej-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>, "Thomas Gleixner" <tglx-hfZtesqFncYOwBW4kG4KsQ@public.gmane.org>, "Mark Lord" <kernel-R6A+fiHC8nRWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org>, "Arjan van de Ven" <arjan-wEGCiKHe2LqWVfeAwA7xHQ@public.gmane.org>, "Tony Luck" <tony.luck-ral2JQCrhuEAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>, KEXEC-ML <kexec-IAPFreCvJWM7uuMidbF8XUB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org>, LKML <linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org>, "Haren Myneni" <hbabu-r/Jw6+rmf7HQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:49:54 +0200 [thread overview] Message-ID: <20110126124954.GC24527@laptop> (raw) In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinU0KYiCd4p=z+=ojbkeEoT2G+CAYvdRU02KJEn-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org> Hi, On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 06:25:19AM +1000, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 11:47 PM, Ahmed S. Darwish <darwish.07-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote: > > > > As a possible solution, below patches prototypes the idea of persistently > > storing the kernel log ring to a hard disk partition using the enhanced BIOS > > 0x13 services. > > > > Quite frankly, I'm not likely to _ever_ merge anything like this. > > Over the years, many people have tried to write things to disk on > oops. I refuse to take it. No way in hell do I want the situation of > "the system is screwed, so let's overwrite the disk" to be something > the kernel I release might do. It's crazy. That disk is a lot more > important than the kernel, and overwriting it when we might have > serious memory corruption issues or something is not a thing I feel is > appropriate. > OK, I've carefully read all the criticism posted here and in the other replies. A short summary: - It will be _too_ much to restore the PIC, IO-APIC, PCI configuration, and disk controllers to the BIOS Power-on self-test (POST) state. The solution will not be guaranteed to work on all machines. - The write path of the BIOS INT 0x13 services is not tested enough by contemporary x86 kernels (Windows and Linux). Thus, that part of the BIOS is probably not as stable as I originally claimed. Possible solutions: - Having a minimal "fail-safe" disk controller driver to access the disk. This can't be made "perfect" enough to work on all combinations of machines (Though it can work on a small subset, e.g. the usual lot of x86 laptops with Intel chipsets). Linus is not OK with the _whole_ idea of doing _any_ disk write on panic. - Use kexec/kdump. I wonder though, can kexec work on early panics? The kind where the disk itself might not yet be initialized? If not, can kexec be modified to do so? That possibly needs the help of a a bootloader extension. - The latest approach (proposed by Linus) is to forget the disk: jump to real-mode, but display the kernel log in a fancy format (with scroll ups and downs) instead. Will re-initializing the VGA registers to their POST state be possible? If not, what about a "fail-safe" VGA driver? I'm most likely going to implement either the second or the third point, so I'd really appreciate some input. thanks, > > If you want to do the BIOS services thing, do it for video: copy the > oops to low RAM, return to real mode, re-run the graphics card POST > routines to initialize text-mode, and use the BIOS to print out the > oops. That is WAY less scary than writing to disk. > > Linus -- Darwish http://darwish.07.googlepages.com
WARNING: multiple messages have this Message-ID (diff)
From: "Ahmed S. Darwish" <darwish.07@gmail.com> To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Cc: "Willy Tarreau" <wtarreau@hera.kernel.org>, "Dirk Hohndel" <hohndel@infradead.org>, "Frédéric Weisbecker" <fweisbec@gmail.com>, FBDEV-ML <linux-fbdev@vger.kernel.org>, IDE-ML <linux-ide@vger.kernel.org>, "Randy Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net>, "James Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@suse.de>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, X86-ML <x86@kernel.org>, "Ingo Molnar" <mingo@redhat.com>, "Ingo Molnar" <mingo@elte.hu>, "Jeff Garzik" <jgarzik@pobox.com>, "Vivek Goyal" <vgoyal@redhat.com>, "Peter Zijlstra" <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>, Dirk.Hohndel@intel.com, "Borislav Petkov" <bp@alien8.de>, "Dave Jones" <davej@redhat.com>, "Thomas Gleixner" <tglx@linutronix.de>, "Mark Lord" <kernel@teksavvy.com>, "Arjan van de Ven" <arjan@infradead.org>, "Tony Luck" <tony.luck@intel.com>, KEXEC-ML <kexec@lists.infradead.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, "Haren Myneni" <hbabu@us.ibm.com>, "Eric Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>, "Tejun Heo" <tj@kernel.org>, "Andrew Morton" <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, "Willy Tarreau" <w@1wt.eu> Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:49:54 +0200 [thread overview] Message-ID: <20110126124954.GC24527@laptop> (raw) In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinU0KYiCd4p=z+=ojbkeEoT2G+CAYvdRU02KJEn@mail.gmail.com> Hi, On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 06:25:19AM +1000, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 11:47 PM, Ahmed S. Darwish <darwish.07@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > As a possible solution, below patches prototypes the idea of persistently > > storing the kernel log ring to a hard disk partition using the enhanced BIOS > > 0x13 services. > > > > Quite frankly, I'm not likely to _ever_ merge anything like this. > > Over the years, many people have tried to write things to disk on > oops. I refuse to take it. No way in hell do I want the situation of > "the system is screwed, so let's overwrite the disk" to be something > the kernel I release might do. It's crazy. That disk is a lot more > important than the kernel, and overwriting it when we might have > serious memory corruption issues or something is not a thing I feel is > appropriate. > OK, I've carefully read all the criticism posted here and in the other replies. A short summary: - It will be _too_ much to restore the PIC, IO-APIC, PCI configuration, and disk controllers to the BIOS Power-on self-test (POST) state. The solution will not be guaranteed to work on all machines. - The write path of the BIOS INT 0x13 services is not tested enough by contemporary x86 kernels (Windows and Linux). Thus, that part of the BIOS is probably not as stable as I originally claimed. Possible solutions: - Having a minimal "fail-safe" disk controller driver to access the disk. This can't be made "perfect" enough to work on all combinations of machines (Though it can work on a small subset, e.g. the usual lot of x86 laptops with Intel chipsets). Linus is not OK with the _whole_ idea of doing _any_ disk write on panic. - Use kexec/kdump. I wonder though, can kexec work on early panics? The kind where the disk itself might not yet be initialized? If not, can kexec be modified to do so? That possibly needs the help of a a bootloader extension. - The latest approach (proposed by Linus) is to forget the disk: jump to real-mode, but display the kernel log in a fancy format (with scroll ups and downs) instead. Will re-initializing the VGA registers to their POST state be possible? If not, what about a "fail-safe" VGA driver? I'm most likely going to implement either the second or the third point, so I'd really appreciate some input. thanks, > > If you want to do the BIOS services thing, do it for video: copy the > oops to low RAM, return to real mode, re-run the graphics card POST > routines to initialize text-mode, and use the BIOS to print out the > oops. That is WAY less scary than writing to disk. > > Linus -- Darwish http://darwish.07.googlepages.com _______________________________________________ kexec mailing list kexec@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/kexec
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-01-26 12:49 UTC|newest] Thread overview: 75+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top 2011-01-25 13:47 [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 13:51 ` [PATCH -next 1/2][RFC] x86: Saveoops: Switch to real-mode and call BIOS Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 17:26 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-25 13:53 ` [PATCH -next 2/2][RFC] x86: Saveoops: Reserve low memory and register code Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 17:29 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-26 9:04 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 14:09 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Ingo Molnar 2011-01-25 15:08 ` Tejun Heo 2011-01-25 17:33 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-26 11:44 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-02-03 14:36 ` Pavel Machek 2011-02-03 15:28 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-02-03 17:57 ` Ingo Molnar 2011-02-03 21:07 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-25 15:36 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 16:02 ` James Bottomley 2011-01-25 17:05 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-25 17:20 ` James Bottomley 2011-01-25 22:10 ` Mark Lord 2011-01-25 22:16 ` Randy Dunlap 2011-01-25 22:45 ` Jeff Garzik 2011-01-25 22:58 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-26 0:26 ` Jeff Garzik 2011-01-31 2:59 ` Rusty Russell 2011-01-31 10:45 ` Ingo Molnar 2011-01-25 17:32 ` Tony Luck 2011-01-25 17:36 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-25 19:04 ` Jeff Garzik 2011-01-25 14:49 ` Tejun Heo 2011-01-28 7:59 ` Jan Ceuleers 2011-01-25 20:25 ` Linus Torvalds [not found] ` <AANLkTinU0KYiCd4p=z+=ojbkeEoT2G+CAYvdRU02KJEn-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-26 12:49 ` Ahmed S. Darwish [this message] 2011-01-26 12:49 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-26 12:58 ` Ingo Molnar 2011-01-26 12:58 ` Ingo Molnar [not found] ` <20110126125813.GA26952-X9Un+BFzKDI@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-26 13:34 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-26 13:34 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-26 14:00 ` Ingo Molnar 2011-01-26 14:00 ` Ingo Molnar [not found] ` <20110126140030.GB30064-X9Un+BFzKDI@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 4:35 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-27 4:35 ` H. Peter Anvin [not found] ` <4D40F5FD.6090507-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 11:41 ` Ingo Molnar 2011-01-27 11:41 ` Ingo Molnar [not found] ` <20110127114113.GB20279-X9Un+BFzKDI@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 15:47 ` Eric W. Biederman 2011-01-27 15:47 ` Eric W. Biederman [not found] ` <m1aaimxs9h.fsf-+imSwln9KH6u2/kzUuoCbdi2O/JbrIOy@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 16:12 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-27 16:12 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-26 23:07 ` Luck, Tony 2011-01-26 23:07 ` Luck, Tony 2011-01-26 23:07 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon Luck, Tony 2011-01-26 23:07 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Luck, Tony [not found] ` <987664A83D2D224EAE907B061CE93D53019438EABF-osO9UTpF0URqS6EAlXoojrfspsVTdybXVpNB7YpNyf8@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-26 23:16 ` Dave Jones 2011-01-26 23:16 ` Dave Jones [not found] ` <20110126231620.GA14807-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-26 23:21 ` Luck, Tony 2011-01-26 23:21 ` Luck, Tony [not found] ` <20110126233033.GB14807@redhat.com> [not found] ` <987664A83D2D224EAE907B061CE93D53019438EBB6@orsmsx505.amr.corp.intel.com> [not found] ` <4D40F7F1.3020509@zytor.com> [not found] ` <20110127120039.GD20279@elte.hu> 2011-01-27 18:35 ` Luck, Tony 2011-01-27 18:35 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon Luck, Tony 2011-01-27 18:35 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Luck, Tony [not found] ` <4D4197CB.9070201@zytor.com> [not found] ` <20110127162429.GB26437@elte.hu> 2011-01-27 18:56 ` Luck, Tony 2011-01-27 18:56 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon Luck, Tony 2011-01-27 18:56 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Luck, Tony 2011-01-27 1:09 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-27 1:09 ` Ahmed S. Darwish [not found] ` <20110127021338.GA20334@redhat.com> [not found] ` <20110127021338.GA20334-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 3:33 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-27 3:33 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-27 4:44 ` H. Peter Anvin 2011-01-27 4:44 ` H. Peter Anvin [not found] ` <4D40F81E.1030009-YMNOUZJC4hwAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> 2011-01-27 5:26 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-27 5:26 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-01-27 7:51 ` Eric W. Biederman 2011-01-27 7:51 ` Eric W. Biederman 2011-02-02 11:13 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-02-02 11:13 ` Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-02-02 11:13 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk Ahmed S. Darwish 2011-02-02 11:13 ` [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk upon panic Ahmed S. Darwish
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