kexec/kdump of a kvm guest?

[Vivek Goyal]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:56:11AM -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 9:12 PM, Vivek Goyal <vgoyal at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 03:03:33PM -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Vivek Goyal <vgoyal at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> > On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 07:49:59AM -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 4:39 AM, Alexander Graf <agraf at suse.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> > As you're stating that the host kernel breaks with kvm modules loaded, maybe
> >> >> > someone there could give a hint.
> >> >>
> >> >> OK, I can try using a newer kernel on the host too (e.g. 2.6.25.x) to
> >> >> see how kexec/kdump of the host fairs when kvm modules are loaded.
> >> >>
> >> >> On the guest side of things, as I mentioned in my original post,
> >> >> kexec/kdump wouldn't work within a 2.6.22.19 guest with the host
> >> >> running 2.6.25.4 (with kvm-70).
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Hi Mike,
> >> >
> >> > I have never tried kexec/kdump inside a kvm guest. So I don't know if
> >> > historically they have been working or not.
> >>
> >> Avi indicated he seems to remember that at least kexec worked last he
> >> tried (didn't provide when/what he tried though).
> >>
> >> > Having said that, Why do we need kdump to work inside the guest? In this
> >> > case qemu should be knowing about the memory of guest kernel and should
> >> > be able to capture a kernel crash dump? I am not sure if qemu already does
> >> > that. If not, then probably we should think about it?
> >> >
> >> > To me, kdump is a good solution for baremetal but not for virtualized
> >> > environment where we already have another piece of software running which
> >> > can do the job for us. We will end up wasting memory in every instance
> >> > of guest (memory reserved for kdump kernel in every guest).
> >>
> >> I haven't looked into what mechanics qemu provides for collecting the
> >> entire guest memory image; I'll dig deeper at some point.  It seems
> >> the libvirt mid-layer ("virsh dump" - dump the core of a domain to a
> >> file for analysis) doesn't support saving a kvm guest core:
> >> # virsh dump guest10 guest10.dump
> >> libvir: error : this function is not supported by the hypervisor:
> >> virDomainCoreDump
> >> error: Failed to core dump domain guest10 to guest10.dump
> >>
> >> Seems that libvirt functionality isn't available yet with kvm (I'm
> >> using libvirt 0.4.2, I'll give libvirt 0.4.4 a try).  cc'ing the
> >> libvirt-list to get their insight.
> >>
> >> That aside, having the crash dump collection be multi-phased really
> >> isn't workable (that is if it requires a crashed guest to be manually
> >> saved after the fact).  The host system _could_ be rebooted; whereby
> >> losing the guest's core image.  So automating qemu and/or libvirtd to
> >> trigger a dump would seem worthwhile (maybe its already done?).
> >>
> >
> > That's a good point. Ideally, one would like dump to be captured
> > automatically if kernel crashes and then reboot back to production
> > kernel. I am not sure what can we do to let qemu know after crash
> > so that it can automatically save dump.
> >
> > What happens in the case of xen guests. Is dump automatically captured
> > or one has to force the dump capture externally.
> >
> >> So while I agree with you its ideal to not have to waste memory in
> >> each guest for the purposes of kdump; if users want to model a guest
> >> image as closely as possible to what will be deployed on bare metal it
> >> really would be ideal to support a 1:1 functional equivalent with kvm.
> >
> > Agreed. Making kdump work inside kvm guest does not harm.
> >
> >>  I work with people who refuse to use kvm because of the lack of
> >> kexec/kdump support.
> >>
> >
> > Interesting.
> >
> >> I can do further research but welcome others' insight: do others have
> >> advice on how best to collect a crashed kvm guest's core?
> >>
> >> > It will be interesting to look at your results with 2.6.25.x kernels with
> >> > kvm module inserted. Currently I can't think what can possibly be wrong.
> >>
> >> If the host's 2.6.25.4 kernel has both the kvm and kvm-intel modules
> >> loaded kexec/kdump does _not_ work (simply hangs the system).  If I
> >> only have the kvm module loaded kexec/kdump works as expected
> >> (likewise if no kvm modules are loaded at all).  So it would appear
> >> that kvm-intel and kexec are definitely mutually exclusive at the
> >> moment (at least on both 2.6.22.x and 2.6.25.x).
> >
> > Ok. So first task is to fix host kexec/kdump with kvm-intel module
> > inserted.
> >
> > Can you do little debugging to find out where system hangs. I generally
> > try few things for kexec related issue debugging.
> >
> > 1. Specify earlyprintk= parameter for second kernel and see if control
> >   is reaching to second kernel.
> >
> > 2. Otherwise specify --console-serial parameter on "kexec -l" commandline
> >   and it should display a message "I am in purgatory" on serial console.
> >   This will just mean that control has reached at least till purgatory.
> >
> > 3. If that also does not work, then most likely first kernel itself got
> >   stuck somewhere and we need to put some printks in first kernel to find
> >   out what's wrong.
> 
> Vivek,
> 
> I've been unable to put time to chasing this (and I'm not seeing when
> I'll be able to get back to it yet).  I hope that others will be
> willing to take a look before me.
> 
> The kvm-intel and kexec incompatibility issue is not exclusive to my
> local environment (simply need a cpu that supports kvm-intel).
> 

Thanks Mike. Let me see if I get some free cycles to debug it.

Thanks
Vivek