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2009-10-03ieee1394: update URLs in debugging-via-ohci1394.txtJustin P. Mattock1-4/+4
Update URLs of the userspace tools to use ohci1394_dma=early for debugging. Seems the address ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/tools/* is not very helpful. After a quick search, seems this was talked about: http://www.mail-archive.com/kgdb-bugreport@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02761.html (can't find the original thread). Signed-off-by: Justin P. Mattock <justinmattock@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2008-04-18firewire: fw-ohci: add option for remote debuggingStefan Richter1-6/+10
This way firewire-ohci can be used for remote debugging like ohci1394. Version with amendment from Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:08:08 +0200. Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Acked-by: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de>
2008-02-19Documentation: correction to debugging-via-ohci1394Stefan Richter1-8/+9
Rectify a factoid about firewire-ohci. Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Also fix a typo spotted by Bernhard Kaindl. Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2008-01-30x86: early boot debugging via FireWire (ohci1394_dma=early)Bernhard Kaindl1-0/+179
This patch adds a new configuration option, which adds support for a new early_param which gets checked in arch/x86/kernel/setup_{32,64}.c:setup_arch() to decide wether OHCI-1394 FireWire controllers should be initialized and enabled for physical DMA access to allow remote debugging of early problems like issues ACPI or other subsystems which are executed very early. If the config option is not enabled, no code is changed, and if the boot paramenter is not given, no new code is executed, and independent of that, all new code is freed after boot, so the config option can be even enabled in standard, non-debug kernels. With specialized tools, it is then possible to get debugging information from machines which have no serial ports (notebooks) such as the printk buffer contents, or any data which can be referenced from global pointers, if it is stored below the 4GB limit and even memory dumps of of the physical RAM region below the 4GB limit can be taken without any cooperation from the CPU of the host, so the machine can be crashed early, it does not matter. In the extreme, even kernel debuggers can be accessed in this way. I wrote a small kgdb module and an accompanying gdb stub for FireWire which allows to gdb to talk to kgdb using remote remory reads and writes over FireWire. An version of the gdb stub fore FireWire is able to read all global data from a system which is running a a normal kernel without any kernel debugger, without any interruption or support of the system's CPU. That way, e.g. the task struct and so on can be read and even manipulated when the physical DMA access is granted. A HOWTO is included in this patch, in Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt and I've put a copy online at ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/docs/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt It also has links to all the tools which are available to make use of it another copy of it is online at: ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/kernel/ohci1394_dma_early-v2.diff Signed-Off-By: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de> Tested-By: Thomas Renninger <trenn@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>