summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorMahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2018-08-20 13:47:17 +0530
committerMichael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>2018-12-21 11:32:49 +1100
commita4e92ce8e4c8275bacfe3529d6ac85d54a233d87 (patch)
treec3caa1eb436daa79fbcb6b81eb3e953cf7e26757 /Documentation
parent08fb726df13778a54592aaa1deea6a154637c868 (diff)
downloadlinux-a4e92ce8e4c8275bacfe3529d6ac85d54a233d87.tar.bz2
powerpc/fadump: Reservationless firmware assisted dump
One of the primary issues with Firmware Assisted Dump (fadump) on Power is that it needs a large amount of memory to be reserved. On large systems with TeraBytes of memory, this reservation can be quite significant. In some cases, fadump fails if the memory reserved is insufficient, or if the reserved memory was DLPAR hot-removed. In the normal case, post reboot, the preserved memory is filtered to extract only relevant areas of interest using the makedumpfile tool. While the tool provides flexibility to determine what needs to be part of the dump and what memory to filter out, all supported distributions default this to "Capture only kernel data and nothing else". We take advantage of this default and the Linux kernel's Contiguous Memory Allocator (CMA) to fundamentally change the memory reservation model for fadump. Instead of setting aside a significant chunk of memory nobody can use, this patch uses CMA instead, to reserve a significant chunk of memory that the kernel is prevented from using (due to MIGRATE_CMA), but applications are free to use it. With this fadump will still be able to capture all of the kernel memory and most of the user space memory except the user pages that were present in CMA region. Essentially, on a P9 LPAR with 2 cores, 8GB RAM and current upstream: [root@zzxx-yy10 ~]# free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7557 193 6822 12 541 6725 Swap: 4095 0 4095 With this patch: [root@zzxx-yy10 ~]# free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 8133 194 7464 12 475 7338 Swap: 4095 0 4095 Changes made here are completely transparent to how fadump has traditionally worked. Thanks to Aneesh Kumar and Anshuman Khandual for helping us understand CMA and its usage. TODO: - Handle case where CMA reservation spans nodes. Signed-off-by: Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli <ananth@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Mahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Hari Bathini <hbathini@linux.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt17
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt b/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt
index bdd344aa18d9..18c5feef2577 100644
--- a/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt
+++ b/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.txt
@@ -113,7 +113,15 @@ header, is usually reserved at an offset greater than boot memory
size (see Fig. 1). This area is *not* released: this region will
be kept permanently reserved, so that it can act as a receptacle
for a copy of the boot memory content in addition to CPU state
-and HPTE region, in the case a crash does occur.
+and HPTE region, in the case a crash does occur. Since this reserved
+memory area is used only after the system crash, there is no point in
+blocking this significant chunk of memory from production kernel.
+Hence, the implementation uses the Linux kernel's Contiguous Memory
+Allocator (CMA) for memory reservation if CMA is configured for kernel.
+With CMA reservation this memory will be available for applications to
+use it, while kernel is prevented from using it. With this fadump will
+still be able to capture all of the kernel memory and most of the user
+space memory except the user pages that were present in CMA region.
o Memory Reservation during first kernel
@@ -162,6 +170,9 @@ How to enable firmware-assisted dump (fadump):
1. Set config option CONFIG_FA_DUMP=y and build kernel.
2. Boot into linux kernel with 'fadump=on' kernel cmdline option.
+ By default, fadump reserved memory will be initialized as CMA area.
+ Alternatively, user can boot linux kernel with 'fadump=nocma' to
+ prevent fadump to use CMA.
3. Optionally, user can also set 'crashkernel=' kernel cmdline
to specify size of the memory to reserve for boot memory dump
preservation.
@@ -172,6 +183,10 @@ NOTE: 1. 'fadump_reserve_mem=' parameter has been deprecated. Instead
2. If firmware-assisted dump fails to reserve memory then it
will fallback to existing kdump mechanism if 'crashkernel='
option is set at kernel cmdline.
+ 3. if user wants to capture all of user space memory and ok with
+ reserved memory not available to production system, then
+ 'fadump=nocma' kernel parameter can be used to fallback to
+ old behaviour.
Sysfs/debugfs files:
------------