/sbin/kexec became zero size... Anyone else?

[Neil Horman]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 01:32:19PM -0700, Jay Lan wrote:
> Neil Horman wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 09:41:50AM -0700, Jay Lan wrote:
> >> Simon Horman wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 02:07:15PM -0700, Jay Lan wrote:
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>>
> >>>> My root disk was populated with sles10sp2, but the kernel was
> >>>> 2.6.27-rc5 and /sbin/kexec was built from 2.0.0 version.
> >>>>
> >>>> Many times when kdump kernel failed early i found  after reboot that
> >>>> /sbin/kexec became zero size. There was no warning on executing
> >>>> '/etc/init.d/kdump start' when /sbin/kexec is zero size. I have
> >>>> no idea when and how that happened.
> >>>>
> >>>> Has anyone else seen this problem?
> >>> Is it possible that this is caused by filesystem corruption?
> >> I found the problems, which i can not reliably reproduce, happened
> >> when i ran into kdump kernel boot failure (yet not every time.)
> >> What puzzled me was why only /sbin/kexec was affected.
> >>
> > This is why most kdump implementations capture vmcore from an initramfs, since
> > a crash means that you may not be able to trust the integrity of the filesystems
> > that were mounted before the panic.
> > 
> > 
> >> I can not explain what caused it (otherwise i would be able to
> >> reproduce it) and do not know where my finger should point to. ;)
> >> The good news is since i fixed the kernel boot problem it has not
> >> happened any more.
> >>
> >> The distros probably can add a check against zero-sized kexec
> >> in /etc/init.d/kdump script though.
> >>
> > Theres really not a need to.  Filesystems can be corrupted by crashes, thats why
> > we capture cores from the initrd.  We need to be able to trust the rest of the
> > system to scan filesystems and do their best to recover when filsystems loose
> > data.
> 
> Hi Neil,
> 
> Which rhel release starts doing this?
> 
> Thanks,
>  - jay
> 
Its always been that way.
Neil

> 
> > 
> > Regards
> > Neil
> >  
> >> Thanks,
> >>  - jay
> >>
> >>
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> > 
> 
> 
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