Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx> writes:
> Thanks for writing that code. It should be an interesting alternative
> on boxes where firescope doesn't work.
>
> I hope I can eventually merge early firewire support code too.
>
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 10:32:02AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>
>> With legacy free systems serial ports have stopped being an option
>> to get early boot traces and other debug information out of a machine.
>
> This needs a CONFIG_* at least. And some documentation on how to set it
> up on both sides.
Besides CONFIG_EARLY_PRINTK I assume. It is enough code so there is a
case for it.
>> This debug device can be used to replace serial ports for
>> kgdb, kdb, and console support. And gregkh has a simple usb
>> serial driver for it so user space applications that control
>> serial ports should work unmodified.
>
> But not merged yet, right? I was hoping it could be done from
> user space anyways.
Sorry old comment, that piece has been merged for a while.
It is the usb_debug module. It creates a tty device that you
can just cat to get the usb debug output.
>> For users the hard part looks like it will be finding cables and
>> finding which is usb debug port 1 and realizing that there is
>> flow control so the kernel boot will not happen if someone is not
>> reading the serial console data.
>
> That's nasty. Any way to work around that?
Maybe. It has been long enough since I wrote the code
I need to go back and look.
>> index 92213d2..dc097aa 100644
>> --- a/arch/x86_64/kernel/early_printk.c
>> +++ b/arch/x86_64/kernel/early_printk.c
>> @@ -3,9 +3,19 @@
>> #include <linux/init.h>
>> #include <linux/string.h>
>> #include <linux/screen_info.h>
>> +#include <linux/usb/ch9.h>
>> +#include <linux/pci_regs.h>
>> +#include <linux/pci_ids.h>
>> +#include <linux/errno.h>
>
> Can you put it in a separate file please?
> Perhaps with a little abstraction in drivers/usb ?
>
>> +static void dbgp_breath(void)
>> +{
>> + /* Sleep to give the debug port a chance to breathe */
>
> But you don't?
Good point. At least this early I'm not certain there is any
way I can productively do that. This is before we have calibrated
the tsc's and the like so timeouts are difficult, and as I
recall our default guess isn't.
This lack of a good timeout looks to be the reason ehci_wait_for_port
doesn't timeout in a timely fashion because I don't timeout until
I have wrapped a 32bit number.
>> +static __u32 __init find_dbgp(int ehci_num, unsigned *rbus, unsigned *rslot,
> unsigned *rfunc)
>
> This should be probably merged into the early quirks loop
>
>> early_console = &simnow_console;
>> keep_early = 1;
>> + } else if (!strncmp(buf, "dbgp", 4)) {
>
> usb would seem to be more intuitive
Could be. I was thinking usb debug port. dbgp is at least unique,
and unfortunately it doesn't look like any old usb cable will
do, so a straight usb I expect would be very misleading.
The truth is I don't have a big need for this. I put it together as
a proof of concept to see how hard it would be, etc. I can clean
it up a little but I'm really hoping I can get this into one of
the development trees and people who have more use for it then I
do can play with it and improve things.
One persons experience on two machines probably isn't quite enough
of a sample to Document how to use this. At least beyond what I
did in my changelog.
Eric
_______________________________________________
Virtualization mailing list
Virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/virtualization
