From: Eugene Surovegin <surovegin@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: [PATCH] kdump: force page alignment for per-CPU crash notes. Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:39:55 -0800 > On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Simon Horman <horms at verge.net.au> wrote: >> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 05:23:10PM -0800, Eugene Surovegin wrote: >>> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Simon Horman <horms at verge.net.au> wrote: >>> >>> > On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 09:21:23AM -0800, Eugene Surovegin wrote: >>> > > Per-CPU allocations are not guaranteed to be physically contiguous. >>> > > However, kdump kernel and user-space code assumes that per-CPU >>> > > memory, used for saving CPU registers on crash, is. >>> > > This can cause corrupted /proc/vmcore in some cases - the main >>> > > symptom being huge ELF note section. >>> > > >>> > > Force page alignment for note_buf_t to ensure that this assumption holds. >>> > >>> > Ouch. I'm surprised there is an allocation on crash, perhaps >>> > it could at least be done earlier? And am I right in thinking >>> > that this change increases the likely hood that the allocation >>> > could fail? >>> > >>> >>> I'm not following. This allocation is done on start-up, not on crash. >>> If you cannot allocate this much memory on system boot, I'm not sure what >>> else you can do on this system.... >> >> Sorry, my eyes deceived me. You are correct and I agree. >> >> Is it the case that note_buf_t is never larger than PAGE_SIZE? >> If so I your patch looks good to me. > > Currently, maximum note size is hardcoded in kexec-tools to 1024 > (MAX_NOTE_BYTES). > Usually it's way less. IIRC on x86_64 it's 336 bytes. > This is elf_prstatus and I guess it's mostly equal to registers. crash> p sizeof(struct elf_prstatus) $3 = 336 crash> ptype struct elf_prstatus type = struct elf_prstatus { struct elf_siginfo pr_info; short int pr_cursig; long unsigned int pr_sigpend; long unsigned int pr_sighold; pid_t pr_pid; pid_t pr_ppid; pid_t pr_pgrp; pid_t pr_sid; struct timeval pr_utime; struct timeval pr_stime; struct timeval pr_cutime; struct timeval pr_cstime; elf_gregset_t pr_reg; <-- this int pr_fpvalid; } What kinds of architecture does have so many registers? It's just my interest. Or possibly other kinds of notes is written here? Thanks. HATAYAMA, Daisuke