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Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:53:55 -0800
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Subject: Re: [concept & "good taste" review] persistent store
From: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
To: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
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On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 3:11 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
> There are two models I can think of:
>
> 1. a file where the head is automatically dropped as space requires.
> 2. a filesystem where the oldest files are automatically reclaimed.
>
> 1 has been implemented in actual systems, 2 is kind of a logical extension.

#2 sounds more applicable here (we have some multi-kilobyte
blobs of data, one from each kmsg_dumper invocation - and
it would seem useful to keep them as separate entities)

I'm not sure whether everyone would be happy with this. Imagine you
have a system that gets two OOPs, followed by a full panic - but that
the persistent store only has space for two of the three reports. I think
that most people would want the first OOPs and the panic ... i.e.
drop the middle bit, rather than the oldest bit.

-Tony