Traditionally, kdump is used to save vmcore in case of a crash. Some architectures like powerpc can save vmcore using architecture specific support instead of kexec/kdump mechanism. Such architecture specific support also needs to reserve memory, to be used by dump capture kernel. crashkernel parameter can be a reused, for memory reservation, by such architecture specific infrastructure. This patchset removes dependency with CONFIG_KEXEC for crashkernel parameter and vmcoreinfo related code as it can be reused without kexec support. Also, crashkernel parameter is reused instead of fadump_reserve_mem to reserve memory for fadump. The first patch moves crashkernel parameter parsing and vmcoreinfo related code under CONFIG_CRASH_CORE instead of CONFIG_KEXEC_CORE. The second patch reuses the definitions of append_elf_note() & final_note() functions under CONFIG_CRASH_CORE in IA64 arch code. The third patch removes dependency on CONFIG_KEXEC for firmware-assisted dump (fadump) in powerpc. The next patch reuses crashkernel parameter for reserving memory for fadump, instead of the fadump_reserve_mem parameter. This has the advantage of using all syntaxes crashkernel parameter supports, for fadump as well. The last patch updates fadump kernel documentation about use of crashkernel parameter. --- Hari Bathini (5): crash: move crashkernel parsing and vmcore related code under CONFIG_CRASH_CORE ia64: reuse append_elf_note() and final_note() functions powerpc/fadump: remove dependency with CONFIG_KEXEC powerpc/fadump: reuse crashkernel parameter for fadump memory reservation powerpc/fadump: update documentation about crashkernel parameter reuse Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt | 23 + arch/Kconfig | 4 arch/ia64/kernel/crash.c | 22 - arch/powerpc/Kconfig | 10 - arch/powerpc/include/asm/fadump.h | 2 arch/powerpc/kernel/crash.c | 2 arch/powerpc/kernel/fadump.c | 57 +-- arch/powerpc/kernel/setup-common.c | 5 include/linux/crash_core.h | 69 +++ include/linux/elf.h | 2 include/linux/kexec.h | 57 --- include/linux/printk.h | 4 kernel/Makefile | 1 kernel/crash_core.c | 439 ++++++++++++++++++++++ kernel/kexec_core.c | 432 ---------------------- kernel/ksysfs.c | 8 kernel/printk/printk.c | 6 17 files changed, 572 insertions(+), 571 deletions(-) create mode 100644 include/linux/crash_core.h create mode 100644 kernel/crash_core.c