vmcore: introduce ELF header in new memory feature

For s390 we want to use /proc/vmcore for our SCSI stand-alone dump
(zfcpdump).  We have support where the first HSA_SIZE bytes are saved into
a hypervisor owned memory area (HSA) before the kdump kernel is booted.
When the kdump kernel starts, it is restricted to use only HSA_SIZE bytes.

The advantages of this mechanism are:

 * No crashkernel memory has to be defined in the old kernel.
 * Early boot problems (before kexec_load has been done) can be dumped
 * Non-Linux systems can be dumped.

We modify the s390 copy_oldmem_page() function to read from the HSA memory
if memory below HSA_SIZE bytes is requested.

Since we cannot use the kexec tool to load the kernel in this scenario,
we have to build the ELF header in the 2nd (kdump/new) kernel.

So with the following patch set we would like to introduce the new
function that the ELF header for /proc/vmcore can be created in the 2nd
kernel memory.

The following steps are done during zfcpdump execution:

1.  Production system crashes
2.  User boots a SCSI disk that has been prepared with the zfcpdump tool
3.  Hypervisor saves CPU state of boot CPU and HSA_SIZE bytes of memory into HSA
4.  Boot loader loads kernel into low memory area
5.  Kernel boots and uses only HSA_SIZE bytes of memory
6.  Kernel saves registers of non-boot CPUs
7.  Kernel does memory detection for dump memory map
8.  Kernel creates ELF header for /proc/vmcore
9.  /proc/vmcore uses this header for initialization
10. The zfcpdump user space reads /proc/vmcore to write dump to SCSI disk
    - copy_oldmem_page() copies from HSA for memory below HSA_SIZE
    - copy_oldmem_page() copies from real memory for memory above HSA_SIZE

Currently for s390 we create the ELF core header in the 2nd kernel with a
small trick.  We relocate the addresses in the ELF header in a way that
for the /proc/vmcore code it seems to be in the 1st kernel (old) memory
and the read_from_oldmem() returns the correct data.  This allows the
/proc/vmcore code to use the ELF header in the 2nd kernel.

This patch:

Exchange the old mechanism with the new and much cleaner function call
override feature that now offcially allows to create the ELF core header
in the 2nd kernel.

To use the new feature the following function have to be defined
by the architecture backend code to read from new memory:

 * elfcorehdr_alloc: Allocate ELF header
 * elfcorehdr_free: Free the memory of the ELF header
 * elfcorehdr_read: Read from ELF header
 * elfcorehdr_read_notes: Read from ELF notes

Signed-off-by: Michael Holzheu <holzheu@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
Cc: HATAYAMA Daisuke <d.hatayama@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Jan Willeke <willeke@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions