Kdump Automation Mechanism

[Neil Horman]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 02:43:11AM +0200, Bernhard Walle wrote:
> * Neil Horman [2008-08-14 08:18]:
> > 
> > That being said, Bernhard, I suppose it would be worthwhile standardizing some
> > configuration settings, seeing as despite our implementation differences, we
> > seem to largely support the same feature set.  Have you given any consideration
> > to defining a standard kdump feature set and configuration syntax?
> 
> I have nothing against consideration in that area.
> 
> SUSE does configuration in /etc/sysconfig/kdump. I think sysconfig is
> also on RedHat, so that is the same?
> 
Its close, /etc/sysconfig/kdump is used to apply options to the kexec utility,
while /etc/kdump.conf directs how the initrd should be constructed.  I would
like to move to using a url style syntax for specifying dump targets like you
have, but there are series of other options that I need to take into
consideration (see
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/source/SRPMS/kexec-tools-1.102pre-15.fc10.src.rpm


> > > [1] mkdumprd on SUSE is only a script that calls mkinitrd with right
> > >     parameters while the mkdumprd on RedHat builds a initramfs for
> > >     kdump itself with busybox
> > I was looking at this, I assume that your initramfs then acts very simmilar to
> > your default initramfs, which mounts the rootfs and runs init, and your kdump
> > capture operations are then implemented in the kdump init script.  Is that
> > correct?
> 
> For kdump, an own initramfs is built. That does the copy stuff in
> initramfs, so that works without rootfs and reboots before init is
> executed.
> 
> So the 'copy' script is not the init script but “init/boot-kdump.sh”
> script if you “hg clone http://freehg.org/u/bwalle/kdump/”.
> Unfortunately, freehg has no tree view in its web interface.
> 
Ahh, so you do all your dump manipulation with your kdumptool binary, I see now.
I handle all of that with various shell scripts in the initramfs.

> Having that said, for testing one must do:
> 
>  - install packages
>    SUSE:
>    o kexec-tools
>    o kdump
>    o makedumpfile
>    RH: ?
> 
Same here.

>  - set crashkernel parameter
>    => can be done with GRUB configuration manually with editing
>       /boot/grub/menu.lst, should be the same on RH and SUSE
> 
Agreed.

>  - enable kdump (that would be “chkconfig kdump on”)
>    => should be the same on RH and SUSE
> 
Agreed.

>  - tweak some configuration settings like the place where it should be
>    saved
>    => KDUMP_SAVEDIR in /etc/sysconfig/kdump
>    => KDUMP_DUMPLEVEL for makedumpfile in /etc/sysconfig/kdump
>    => KDUMP_DUMPFORMAT (“compressed” / “ELF” / “”)
>       in /etc/sysconfig/kdump
> 
Agreed.  I think this is where we diverge though.  We seem to support much of
the same dump targets but our configuaration directives are different.  For me,
I would need to configure:
<dump type> <type data>
<core_collector> <cp|makedumpfile> [options]

>  - trigger kdump
>    => echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger
> 
> Most other stuff is “nice to have” but not “mandatory” I think?
> 
Actually, you're right.  Looking over it, I do have a set of additional options,
but none are central to dump collection (link delay specification for spanning
tree, kdump pre/post scripts, etc).

> 
> 
> Bernhard
> -- 
> Bernhard Walle, SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Architecture Development
> 
> “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
>        -- Albert Einstein
> 
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-- 
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 *Neil Horman
 *Senior Software Engineer
 *Red Hat, Inc.
 *nhorman at redhat.com
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