Messages in this thread | | | From | Keith Owens <> | Subject | Re: New partition type? | Date | Sun, 09 May 1999 11:38:37 +1000 |
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On Sat, 8 May 1999 16:00:10 +0100 (GMT), Riley Williams <rhw@MemAlpha.CX> wrote: >Personally, I would see oops-handling as a system-dependant config >option, with the following as possibilities: > > 1. Write the oops to a dedicated oops partition. > >If it's of interest, I'd be willing to have a go at writing the driver >for option (1) above, with the aim of making it safe for use in most >oops scenarios.
OK, I'll bite. How do you plan to write to a disk partition after an Oops that has hung the machine? The hang can be caused by interrupts being disabled, by a lock deadlock, by bottom halves unable to run and probably some other causes as well. IMHO, any attempt to write Oops to disk must be done outside the normal kernel I/O mechanisms. If your I/O uses any interrupts, gets any locks or does any bh processing, expect your dump to hang as well.
Safely writing an Oops is all very well but any new mechanism needs to be reliable as well. The more I look at this problem, the more I think that the only reliable option on a single machine is one that stores the Oops text in memory that does not get overwritten on reboot.
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