Re: [PATCH 0/2][concept RFC] x86: BIOS-save kernel log to disk uponpanic

From: Jan Ceuleers
Date: Fri Jan 28 2011 - 03:00:16 EST


On 25/01/11 15:49, Tejun Heo wrote:
I'm afraid this is gonna be something which works sometimes (or even
more times than not) but can't ever be made reliable. I think it
would be better to head toward usb or other kind of early console.

Apologies in advance if this is a stupid idea, but would it be possible and safer to dedicate a whole device (such as a USB thumb drive or a memory card) to this? You could initialise the media in a certain way to let the kernel know that it is OK to trample on the device.

You'd have a mkpoops command (make persistent oops :-). Perhaps this could be a new partition table type. The kernel could either auto-detect such a device or be told which-one to use. It could then, upon crash and prior to writing to it, re-verify that the device bears the hallmarks of being a poops device.

Thanks, Jan
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