[RFC v2 0/2] kernel: add support to collect hardware logs in crash recovery kernel

[Rahul Lakkireddy]

On Friday, March 03/16/18, 2018 at 16:42:03 +0530, Rahul Lakkireddy wrote:
> On production servers running variety of workloads over time, kernel
> panic can happen sporadically after days or even months. It is
> important to collect as much debug logs as possible to root cause
> and fix the problem, that may not be easy to reproduce. Snapshot of
> underlying hardware/firmware state (like register dump, firmware
> logs, adapter memory, etc.), at the time of kernel panic will be very
> helpful while debugging the culprit device driver.
> 
> This series of patches add new generic framework that enable device
> drivers to collect device specific snapshot of the hardware/firmware
> state of the underlying device in the crash recovery kernel. In crash
> recovery kernel, the collected logs are exposed via /proc/crashdd/
> directory, which is copied by user space scripts for post-analysis.
> 
> A kernel module crashdd is newly added. In crash recovery kernel,
> crashdd exposes /proc/crashdd/ directory containing device specific
> hardware/firmware logs.
> 
> The sequence of actions done by device drivers to append their device
> specific hardware/firmware logs to /proc/crashdd/ directory are as
> follows:
> 
> 1. During probe (before hardware is initialized), device drivers
> register to the crashdd module (via crashdd_add_dump()), with
> callback function, along with buffer size and log name needed for
> firmware/hardware log collection.
> 
> 2. Crashdd creates a driver's directory under /proc/crashdd/<driver>.
> Then, it allocates the buffer with requested size and invokes the
> device driver's registered callback function.
> 
> 3. Device driver collects all hardware/firmware logs into the buffer
> and returns control back to crashdd.
> 
> 4. Crashdd exposes the buffer as a file via
> /proc/crashdd/<driver>/<dump_file>.
> 
> 5. User space script (/usr/lib/kdump/kdump-lib-initramfs.sh) copies
> the entire /proc/crashdd/ directory to /var/crash/ directory.
> 
> Patch 1 adds crashdd module to allow drivers to register callback to
> collect the device specific hardware/firmware logs.  The module also
> exports /proc/crashdd/ directory containing the hardware/firmware logs.
> 
> Patch 2 shows a cxgb4 driver example using the API to collect
> hardware/firmware logs in crash recovery kernel, before hardware is
> initialized.  The logs for the devices are made available under
> /proc/crashdd/cxgb4/ directory.
> 
> Suggestions and feedback will be much appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rahul
> 
> RFC v1: https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg486562.html
> 
> ---
> v2:
> - Added new crashdd module that exports /proc/crashdd/ containing
>   driver's registered hardware/firmware logs in patch 1.
> - Replaced the API to allow drivers to register their hardware/firmware
>   log collect routine in crash recovery kernel in patch 1.
> - Updated patch 2 to use the new API in patch 1.
> 
> Rahul Lakkireddy (2):
>   proc/crashdd: add API to collect hardware dump in second kernel
>   cxgb4: collect hardware dump in second kernel
> 
>  drivers/net/ethernet/chelsio/cxgb4/cxgb4.h       |   4 +
>  drivers/net/ethernet/chelsio/cxgb4/cxgb4_cudbg.c |  25 +++
>  drivers/net/ethernet/chelsio/cxgb4/cxgb4_cudbg.h |   3 +
>  drivers/net/ethernet/chelsio/cxgb4/cxgb4_main.c  |  12 ++
>  fs/proc/Kconfig                                  |  11 +
>  fs/proc/Makefile                                 |   1 +
>  fs/proc/crashdd.c                                | 263 +++++++++++++++++++++++
>  include/linux/crashdd.h                          |  43 ++++
>  8 files changed, 362 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 fs/proc/crashdd.c
>  create mode 100644 include/linux/crashdd.h
> 
> -- 
> 2.14.1
> 

Does anyone have any comments with this approach?  If there are no
comments, then I'll re-spin this RFC to Patch series.

Thanks,
Rahul