Re: Post-mortem debugging tools

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 09:39:04PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> Hi all,
> we have quite a few tools in base that still require KVM or optionally
> support it. Removing all tools that require KVM for operation (and
> therefore setgid) is one of the open goals. It would be nice if that
> doesn't require adding lots of duplicate code. For that, a decision is
> required what programs are required for post-mortem analysis (i.e.
> debugging kernel dumps) and limit dual-KVM/sysctl code paths to that.

For post-mortem work you often want the raw information from the kernel
structures (ie including the KVA of things), which the normal user-tools
don't need.

Putting the work into a single program that grovells KVM for diagnostics
(aka SYV crash) means that only one program has to exactly match the
kernel (and, maybe, could be compiled with the kernel?).

Possibly some of the printf() statements could be shared with ddb.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost