Introduce a PT_NOTE program header that points to physical address of
vmcoreinfo_note buffer declared in kernel/kexec.c. The vmcoreinfo
note buffer is populated during crash_fadump() at the time of system
crash.
Signed-off-by: NMahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NBenjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>

When registered for firmware assisted dump on powerpc, firmware preserves
the registers for the active CPUs during a system crash. This patch reads
the cpu register data stored in Firmware-assisted dump format (except for
crashing cpu) and converts it into elf notes and updates the PT_NOTE program
header accordingly. The exact register state for crashing cpu is saved to
fadump crash info structure in scratch area during crash_fadump() and read
during second kernel boot.
Signed-off-by: NMahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NBenjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>

Build the crash memory range list by traversing through system memory during
the first kernel before we register for firmware-assisted dump. After the
successful dump registration, initialize the elfcore header and populate
PT_LOAD program headers with crash memory ranges. The elfcore header is
saved in the scratch area within the reserved memory. The scratch area starts
at the end of the memory reserved for saving RMR region contents. The
scratch area contains fadump crash info structure that contains magic number
for fadump validation and physical address where the eflcore header can be
found. This structure will also be used to pass some important crash info
data to the second kernel which will help second kernel to populate ELF core
header with correct data before it gets exported through /proc/vmcore. Since
the firmware preserves the entire partition memory at the time of crash the
contents of the scratch area will be preserved till second kernel boot.

Since the memory dump exported through /proc/vmcore is in ELF format similar
to kdump, it will help us to reuse the kdump infrastructure for dump capture
and filtering. Unlike phyp dump, userspace tool does not need to refer any
sysfs interface while reading /proc/vmcore.

NOTE: The current design implementation does not address a possibility of
introducing additional fields (in future) to this structure without affecting
compatibility. It's on TODO list to come up with better approach to
address this.

Reserved dump area start => +-------------------------------------+
                            |  CPU state dump data                |
                            +-------------------------------------+
                            |  HPTE region data                   |
                            +-------------------------------------+
                            |  RMR region data                    |
Scratch area start       => +-------------------------------------+
                            |  fadump crash info structure {      |
                            |     magic nummber                   |
                     +------|---- elfcorehdr_addr                 |
                     |      |  }                                  |
                     +----> +-------------------------------------+
                            |  ELF core header                    |
Reserved dump area end   => +-------------------------------------+
Signed-off-by: NMahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NBenjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>

On 2012-02-20 11:02:51 Mon, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 04:44:30PM +0530, Mahesh J Salgaonkar wrote:
>
> If I have read the code correctly, we are going to get this printk on
> non-pSeries machines or on older pSeries machines, even if the user
> has not put the fadump=on option on the kernel command line.  The
> printk will be annoying since there is no actual error condition.  It
> seems to me that the condition for the printk should include
> fw_dump.fadump_enabled.  In other words you should probably add
>
> 	if (!fw_dump.fadump_enabled)
> 		return 0;
>
> at the beginning of the function.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for pointing it out. Please find the updated patch below.

The existing patches above this (4/10 through 10/10) cleanly applies
on this update.

Thanks,
-Mahesh.
Signed-off-by: NBenjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>

Reserve the memory during early boot to preserve CPU state data, HPTE region
and RMA (real mode area) region data in case of kernel crash. At the time of
crash, powerpc firmware will store CPU state data, HPTE region data and move
RMA region data to the reserved memory area.

If the firmware-assisted dump fails to reserve the memory, then fallback
to existing kexec-based kdump.

Most of the code implementation to reserve memory has been
adapted from phyp assisted dump implementation written by Linas Vepstas
and Manish Ahuja

This patch also introduces a config option CONFIG_FA_DUMP for firmware
assisted dump feature on Powerpc (ppc64) architecture.
Signed-off-by: NMahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NBenjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>