[PATCH v3 0/3] Add command to display or save Linux PStore dumps

[Heinrich Schuchardt]

On 3/19/20 9:37 PM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Frédéric,
>
> In message <20200319175737.10166-1-frederic.danis at collabora.com> you wrote:
>> This serie of patches adds a new pstore command allowing to display or save
>> ramoops logs (oops, panic, console, ftrace and user) generated by a previous
>> kernel crash.
>> PStore parameters can be set in U-Boot configuration file, or at run-time
>> using "pstore set" command. For kernel using Device Tree, the parameters are
>> dynamically added to Device Tree.
>> Records size should be the same as the ones used by kernel, and should be a
>> power of 2.
>
> I wonder if we are reinventing the wheel here again?
>
> There is this feature in U-Boot which is called "shared log buffer";
> a couple of years ago this was fully functional at least on Power
> and ARM architectures, but it was rarely used and probably has not
> been tested for years.  A;so, the necessary tiny patch to have it
> supported in Linux as well never made it upstream (don't remember
> why, likely lack of time/interest).
>
> The functionality we had then was the following:
>
> - A memory area war reserved in U-Boot (typically at the upper end
>    of memory) as a buffer that was shared between U-Boot and Linux.
>    The format was as used for the kernel log buffer.
> - Upon boot, U-Boot would not re-initialize an existing log buffer,
>    but keep it's content.  That means, you could read and display the
>    log buffer of the linux kernel that was running before the reset.
>    After kernel crashes, pretty often this contained information that
>    the kernel could not even print to the serial console any more.
> - In U-Boot, you could append log entries to that buffer.  For
>    example, this was used to record the results of the Power On Self
>    Test (POST) routines (another feature that only few people still
>    remember).
> - When booting Linux, the kernel syslog mechanism was used to
>    extract the information from the log buffer in the usual way.
>
> The interesting fact here was that the Linux kernel was able to
> extract and save the kernel panic messages etc. from the crash
> before, plus any messages logged by U-Boot.
>
>
> To me this sounds very much like what you are adding here (plus a
> few features more).  Does it make sense to unify such code?

It seems you are relating to
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/844oyrqvvb.fsf@sauna.l.org/t/

ramoops in Linux is exactly doing what was suggested in 2009. You can
find the Documentation/admin-guide/ramoops.rst

git grep -GHrn 'shared log' finds nothing in U-Boot. So if any part of
the old implementation in U-Boot exists, could you, please, point us to
the coding.

If the original design never made it into Linux and there is an
established Linux interface since 2011, I would plead to eliminate any
remaining non-compliant coding from U-Boot should it exist.

Best regards

Heinrich

>
>
>
> Added Heiko to Cc:, as he is currently working on fixes to get
> shared logbuffer working again for another project.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>