[PATCH v4][makedumpfile 0/7] btf/kallsyms based makedumpfile extension for mm page filtering
HAGIO KAZUHITO(萩尾 一仁)
k-hagio-ab at nec.com
Fri Apr 3 01:06:53 PDT 2026
On 2026/03/18 0:07, Tao Liu wrote:
> A) This patchset will introduce the following features to makedumpfile:
>
> 1) Add .so extension support to makedumpfile
> 2) Enable btf and kallsyms for symbol type and address resolving.
>
> B) The purpose of the features are:
>
> 1) Currently makedumpfile filters mm pages based on page flags, because flags
> can help to determine one page's usage. But this page-flag-checking method
> lacks of flexibility in certain cases, e.g. if we want to filter those mm
> pages occupied by GPU during vmcore dumping due to:
>
> a) GPU may be taking a large memory and contains sensitive data;
> b) GPU mm pages have no relations to kernel crash and useless for vmcore
> analysis.
>
> But there is no GPU mm page specific flags, and apparently we don't need
> to create one just for kdump use. A programmable filtering tool is more
> suitable for such cases. In addition, different GPU vendors may use
> different ways for mm pages allocating, programmable filtering is better
> than hard coding these GPU specific logics into makedumpfile in this case.
>
> 2) Currently makedumpfile already contains a programmable filtering tool, aka
> eppic script, which allows user to write customized code for data erasing.
> However it has the following drawbacks:
>
> a) cannot do mm page filtering.
> b) need to access to debuginfo of both kernel and modules, which is not
> applicable in the 2nd kernel.
> c) eppic library has memory leaks which are not all resolved [1]. This
> is not acceptable in 2nd kernel.
>
> makedumpfile need to resolve the dwarf data from debuginfo, to get symbols
> types and addresses. In recent kernel there are dwarf alternatives such
> as btf/kallsyms which can be used for this purpose. And btf/kallsyms info
> are already packed within vmcore, so we can use it directly.
>
> With these, this patchset introduces makedumpfile extensions, which is based
> on btf/kallsyms symbol resolving, and is programmable for mm page filtering.
> The following section shows its usage and performance, please note the tests
> are performed in 1st kernel.
>
> 3) Compile and run makedumpfile extensions:
>
> $ make LINKTYPE=dynamic USELZO=on USESNAPPY=on USEZSTD=on
> $ make extensions
>
> $ /usr/bin/time -v ./makedumpfile -d 31 -l /var/crash/127.0.0.1-2025-06-10-18\:03\:12/vmcore
> /tmp/extension.out --extension amdgpu_filter.so
> Loaded extension: ./extensions/amdgpu_filter.so
> makedumpfile Completed.
> User time (seconds): 5.08
> System time (seconds): 0.84
> Percent of CPU this job got: 99%
> Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:05.95
> Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 17360
> ...
>
> To contrast with eppic script of v2 [2]:
>
> $ /usr/bin/time -v ./makedumpfile -d 31 -l /var/crash/127.0.0.1-2025-06-10-18\:03\:12/vmcore
> /tmp/eppic.out --eppic eppic_scripts/filter_amdgpu_mm_pages.c
> makedumpfile Completed.
> User time (seconds): 8.23
> System time (seconds): 0.88
> Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:09.16
> Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 57128
> ...
>
> -rw------- 1 root root 367475074 Jan 19 19:01 /tmp/extension.out
> -rw------- 1 root root 367475074 Jan 19 19:48 /tmp/eppic.out
> -rw------- 1 root root 387181418 Jun 10 18:03 /var/crash/127.0.0.1-2025-06-10-18:03:12/vmcore
>
> C) Discussion:
>
> 1) GPU types: Currently only tested with amdgpu's mm page filtering, others
> are not tested.
> 2) OS: The code can work on rhel-10+/rhel9.5+ on x86_64/arm64/s390/ppc64.
> Others are not tested.
>
> D) Testing:
>
> If you don't want to create your vmcore, you can find a vmcore which I
> created with amdgpu mm pages unfiltered [3], the amdgpu mm pages are
> allocated by program [4]. You can use the vmcore in 1st kernel to filter
> the amdgpu mm pages by the previous performance testing cmdline. To
> verify the pages are filtered in crash:
>
> Unfiltered:
> crash> search -c "!QAZXSW@#EDC"
> ffff96b7fa800000: !QAZXSW@#EDCXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> ffff96b87c800000: !QAZXSW@#EDCXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> crash> rd ffff96b7fa800000
> ffff96b7fa800000: 405753585a415121 !QAZXSW@
> crash> rd ffff96b87c800000
> ffff96b87c800000: 405753585a415121 !QAZXSW@
>
> Filtered:
> crash> search -c "!QAZXSW@#EDC"
> crash> rd ffff96b7fa800000
> rd: page excluded: kernel virtual address: ffff96b7fa800000 type: "64-bit KVADDR"
> crash> rd ffff96b87c800000
> rd: page excluded: kernel virtual address: ffff96b87c800000 type: "64-bit KVADDR"
>
> [1]: https://github.com/lucchouina/eppic/pull/32
> [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/kexec/20251020222410.8235-1-ltao@redhat.com/
> [3]: https://people.redhat.com/~ltao/core/vmcore
> [4]: https://gist.github.com/liutgnu/a8cbce1c666452f1530e1410d1f352df
>
> v4 -> v3:
>
> 1) Get rid of all hash table usage. So only required syms/types info
> will be stored, rather than install all kernel's syms/types. To do this,
> special elf sections as .init_ksyms/ktypes are used for the required info
> declaration/storage.
>
> 2) Support extension callback for makedumpfile, so during mm page
> filtering, extension can help to decide if keep/discard the page.
>
> 3) The patches are organized as follows:
>
> --- <only for test purpose, don't merge> ---
> 7. Filter amdgpu mm pages
>
> --- <code should be merged> ---
> 6. Add makedumpfile extensions support
> 5. Implement kernel module's btf resolving
> 4. Implement kernel module's kallsyms resolving
> 3. Implement kernel btf resolving
> 2. Implement kernel kallsyms resolving
> 1. Reserve sections for makedumpfile and extenions
>
> Patch 7 is customization specific, which can be maintained separately.
> Patch 1 ~ 6 are common code which should be integrate with makedumpfile.
Hi Tao,
thank you for the update, nice and interesting implementation :-)
Here is my comments to the whole patchset:
- I think we need a documentation about this function and it's better to
have a simple example extension (that does not need to be updated) if
possible.
- It could not be built on RHEL8 and it's ok if libbpf is too old, but
which version of libbpf is required? It should be written in a
documentation.
- Looking at this, e.g. "makedumpfile -d 1 --extension foo.so" does not
run run_extension_callback(), is it intended?
/*
* Exclude cache pages, cache private pages, user data pages,
* and hwpoison pages.
*/
if (info->dump_level & DL_EXCLUDE_CACHE ||
info->dump_level & DL_EXCLUDE_CACHE_PRI ||
info->dump_level & DL_EXCLUDE_USER_DATA ||
NUMBER(PG_hwpoison) != NOT_FOUND_NUMBER ||
((info->dump_level & DL_EXCLUDE_FREE) &&
info->page_is_buddy)) {
if (!exclude_unnecessary_pages(cycle)) {
ERRMSG("Can't exclude unnecessary pages.\n");
return FALSE;
}
}
- I'm concerned that readmem()s don't have check on return value, it's
better to be able to determine which value is unable to be read.
The other comments are in each patch.
Thanks,
Kazu
>
> Link to v3: https://lore.kernel.org/kexec/20260120025500.25095-1-ltao@redhat.com/
> Link to v2: https://lore.kernel.org/kexec/20251020222410.8235-1-ltao@redhat.com/
> Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/kexec/20250610095743.18073-1-ltao@redhat.com/
>
> Tao Liu (7):
> Reserve sections for makedumpfile and extenions
> Implement kernel kallsyms resolving
> Implement kernel btf resolving
> Implement kernel module's kallsyms resolving
> Implement kernel module's btf resolving
> Add makedumpfile extensions support
> Filter amdgpu mm pages
>
> Makefile | 11 +-
> btf_info.c | 345 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> btf_info.h | 92 ++++++++
> extension.c | 300 +++++++++++++++++++++++
> extension.h | 12 +
> extensions/Makefile | 12 +
> extensions/amdgpu_filter.c | 190 +++++++++++++++
> extensions/maple_tree.c | 307 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
> extensions/maple_tree.h | 6 +
> kallsyms.c | 473 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> kallsyms.h | 94 ++++++++
> makedumpfile.c | 41 +++-
> makedumpfile.h | 13 +
> makedumpfile.ld | 15 ++
> 14 files changed, 1903 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> create mode 100644 btf_info.c
> create mode 100644 btf_info.h
> create mode 100644 extension.c
> create mode 100644 extension.h
> create mode 100644 extensions/Makefile
> create mode 100644 extensions/amdgpu_filter.c
> create mode 100644 extensions/maple_tree.c
> create mode 100644 extensions/maple_tree.h
> create mode 100644 kallsyms.c
> create mode 100644 kallsyms.h
> create mode 100644 makedumpfile.ld
>
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