Re: [PATCH 1/2] OLPC: Add support for calling into Open Firmware

From: David Miller
Date: Mon Apr 21 2008 - 00:27:12 EST


From: Mitch Bradley <wmb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:05:26 -1000

> In SPARC land, at least on SunOS and Solaris, it was very convenient for
> debugging to interrupt the OS with Stop-A and use OFW to inspect the
> system state. That was especially handy for live crash analysis. Dumps
> are useful as far as they go, but they often fail to capture detailed
> I/O device state.

In most current SPARC systems, OFW is not usable and is completely
forgotten right after bootup in order to accomodate LDOMs and CPU
hotplug.

It's a better idea, anyways, to develop more pervasive and usable
in-kernel debugger facilities. Then it doesn't matter if you have
"cool" firmware or not. :-)

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