Hi Dave, Mahesh, On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:07:50 -0500 (EST) Dave Anderson <anderson at redhat.com> wrote: > > > > Please find the makedumpfile enhancement patchset that introduces a data > > filtering feature which enables makedumpfile to filter out desired kernel > > symbol data and it's members from the specified VMCORE file. The data to be > > filtered out is poisoned with character 'X' (58 in Hex). > > > > This feature will be very useful for the customers who wants to erase the > > customer sensitive data like security keys and other confidential data, in > > DUMPFILE before sending it to support team for analysis. > > > > This feature introduces a filter config file where, using filter commands, > > user can specify desired kernel data symbols and it's members that need to be > > filtered out while creating o/p DUMPFILE. The Syntax for filter commands are > > provided in the filter.conf(8) man page. > > > > The first 4 patches prepares the base work for filtering framework. The last 2 > > patches implements the generic filtering framework to erase desired kernel > > data. > > > > I have tested these patches on x86_64 and s390x architecture against RHEL6 GA > > kernel. The feature supports filtering data from ELF as well as kdump-compressed > > formatted dump. > > > > Please review the patchset and let me know your comments. > > > > Thanks, > > -Mahesh. > > Hi Mahesh, > > Is there any notation in the filtered ELF kdump or compressed kdump file > that filtering has been done? Given that there may be potential ramifications > in crash utility behavior (or outright failure?), the crash utility should > display a warning message early on during invocation. That is a good point. How about adding new members (like offset_eraseinfo, size_eraseinfo) into the sub header in compressed kdump file, and setting version 5 in the header version (disk_dump_header.header_version) ? These members show the erased information like the following: struct kdump_sub_header { unsigned long phys_base; int dump_level; /* header_version 1 and later */ int split; /* header_version 2 and later */ unsigned long start_pfn; /* header_version 2 and later */ unsigned long end_pfn; /* header_version 2 and later */ off_t offset_vmcoreinfo;/* header_version 3 and later */ unsigned long size_vmcoreinfo; /* header_version 3 and later */ off_t offset_note; /* header_version 4 and later */ unsigned long size_note; /* header_version 4 and later */ + off_t offset_eraseinfo; /* header_version 5 and later */ + unsigned long size_eraseinfo; /* header_version 5 and later */ }; The erased information contains only effective lines in the configuration file. In case of ELF kdump file, how about adding a ELF note section which also show the erased information ? The crash utility will be able to know the name list of the erased symbols from the information. Thanks Ken'ichi Ohmichi