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author | 2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800 | |
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committer | 2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800 | |
commit | 5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2 (patch) | |
tree | cc5c2d0a898769fd59549594fedb3ee6f84e59a0 /Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst | |
download | linux-5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2.tar.gz linux-5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2.zip |
Merge tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-nextgrafted
Pull networking updates from Jakub Kicinski:
"Core:
- Add dedicated kmem_cache for typical/small skb->head, avoid having
to access struct page at kfree time, and improve memory use.
- Introduce sysctl to set default RPS configuration for new netdevs.
- Define Netlink protocol specification format which can be used to
describe messages used by each family and auto-generate parsers.
Add tools for generating kernel data structures and uAPI headers.
- Expose all net/core sysctls inside netns.
- Remove 4s sleep in netpoll if carrier is instantly detected on
boot.
- Add configurable limit of MDB entries per port, and port-vlan.
- Continue populating drop reasons throughout the stack.
- Retire a handful of legacy Qdiscs and classifiers.
Protocols:
- Support IPv4 big TCP (TSO frames larger than 64kB).
- Add IP_LOCAL_PORT_RANGE socket option, to control local port range
on socket by socket basis.
- Track and report in procfs number of MPTCP sockets used.
- Support mixing IPv4 and IPv6 flows in the in-kernel MPTCP path
manager.
- IPv6: don't check net.ipv6.route.max_size and rely on garbage
collection to free memory (similarly to IPv4).
- Support Penultimate Segment Pop (PSP) flavor in SRv6 (RFC8986).
- ICMP: add per-rate limit counters.
- Add support for user scanning requests in ieee802154.
- Remove static WEP support.
- Support minimal Wi-Fi 7 Extremely High Throughput (EHT) rate
reporting.
- WiFi 7 EHT channel puncturing support (client & AP).
BPF:
- Add a rbtree data structure following the "next-gen data structure"
precedent set by recently added linked list, that is, by using
kfunc + kptr instead of adding a new BPF map type.
- Expose XDP hints via kfuncs with initial support for RX hash and
timestamp metadata.
- Add BPF_F_NO_TUNNEL_KEY extension to bpf_skb_set_tunnel_key to
better support decap on GRE tunnel devices not operating in collect
metadata.
- Improve x86 JIT's codegen for PROBE_MEM runtime error checks.
- Remove the need for trace_printk_lock for bpf_trace_printk and
bpf_trace_vprintk helpers.
- Extend libbpf's bpf_tracing.h support for tracing arguments of
kprobes/uprobes and syscall as a special case.
- Significantly reduce the search time for module symbols by
livepatch and BPF.
- Enable cpumasks to be used as kptrs, which is useful for tracing
programs tracking which tasks end up running on which CPUs in
different time intervals.
- Add support for BPF trampoline on s390x and riscv64.
- Add capability to export the XDP features supported by the NIC.
- Add __bpf_kfunc tag for marking kernel functions as kfuncs.
- Add cgroup.memory=nobpf kernel parameter option to disable BPF
memory accounting for container environments.
Netfilter:
- Remove the CLUSTERIP target. It has been marked as obsolete for
years, and we still have WARN splats wrt races of the out-of-band
/proc interface installed by this target.
- Add 'destroy' commands to nf_tables. They are identical to the
existing 'delete' commands, but do not return an error if the
referenced object (set, chain, rule...) did not exist.
Driver API:
- Improve cpumask_local_spread() locality to help NICs set the right
IRQ affinity on AMD platforms.
- Separate C22 and C45 MDIO bus transactions more clearly.
- Introduce new DCB table to control DSCP rewrite on egress.
- Support configuration of Physical Layer Collision Avoidance (PLCA)
Reconciliation Sublayer (RS) (802.3cg-2019). Modern version of
shared medium Ethernet.
- Support for MAC Merge layer (IEEE 802.3-2018 clause 99). Allowing
preemption of low priority frames by high priority frames.
- Add support for controlling MACSec offload using netlink SET.
- Rework devlink instance refcounts to allow registration and
de-registration under the instance lock. Split the code into
multiple files, drop some of the unnecessarily granular locks and
factor out common parts of netlink operation handling.
- Add TX frame aggregation parameters (for USB drivers).
- Add a new attr TCA_EXT_WARN_MSG to report TC (offload) warning
messages with notifications for debug.
- Allow offloading of UDP NEW connections via act_ct.
- Add support for per action HW stats in TC.
- Support hardware miss to TC action (continue processing in SW from
a specific point in the action chain).
- Warn if old Wireless Extension user space interface is used with
modern cfg80211/mac80211 drivers. Do not support Wireless
Extensions for Wi-Fi 7 devices at all. Everyone should switch to
using nl80211 interface instead.
- Improve the CAN bit timing configuration. Use extack to return
error messages directly to user space, update the SJW handling,
including the definition of a new default value that will benefit
CAN-FD controllers, by increasing their oscillator tolerance.
New hardware / drivers:
- Ethernet:
- nVidia BlueField-3 support (control traffic driver)
- Ethernet support for imx93 SoCs
- Motorcomm yt8531 gigabit Ethernet PHY
- onsemi NCN26000 10BASE-T1S PHY (with support for PLCA)
- Microchip LAN8841 PHY (incl. cable diagnostics and PTP)
- Amlogic gxl MDIO mux
- WiFi:
- RealTek RTL8188EU (rtl8xxxu)
- Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 devices (ath12k)
- CAN:
- Renesas R-Car V4H
Drivers:
- Bluetooth:
- Set Per Platform Antenna Gain (PPAG) for Intel controllers.
- Ethernet NICs:
- Intel (1G, igc):
- support TSN / Qbv / packet scheduling features of i226 model
- Intel (100G, ice):
- use GNSS subsystem instead of TTY
- multi-buffer XDP support
- extend support for GPIO pins to E823 devices
- nVidia/Mellanox:
- update the shared buffer configuration on PFC commands
- implement PTP adjphase function for HW offset control
- TC support for Geneve and GRE with VF tunnel offload
- more efficient crypto key management method
- multi-port eswitch support
- Netronome/Corigine:
- add DCB IEEE support
- support IPsec offloading for NFP3800
- Freescale/NXP (enetc):
- support XDP_REDIRECT for XDP non-linear buffers
- improve reconfig, avoid link flap and waiting for idle
- support MAC Merge layer
- Other NICs:
- sfc/ef100: add basic devlink support for ef100
- ionic: rx_push mode operation (writing descriptors via MMIO)
- bnxt: use the auxiliary bus abstraction for RDMA
- r8169: disable ASPM and reset bus in case of tx timeout
- cpsw: support QSGMII mode for J721e CPSW9G
- cpts: support pulse-per-second output
- ngbe: add an mdio bus driver
- usbnet: optimize usbnet_bh() by avoiding unnecessary queuing
- r8152: handle devices with FW with NCM support
- amd-xgbe: support 10Mbps, 2.5GbE speeds and rx-adaptation
- virtio-net: support multi buffer XDP
- virtio/vsock: replace virtio_vsock_pkt with sk_buff
- tsnep: XDP support
- Ethernet high-speed switches:
- nVidia/Mellanox (mlxsw):
- add support for latency TLV (in FW control messages)
- Microchip (sparx5):
- separate explicit and implicit traffic forwarding rules, make
the implicit rules always active
- add support for egress DSCP rewrite
- IS0 VCAP support (Ingress Classification)
- IS2 VCAP filters (protos, L3 addrs, L4 ports, flags, ToS
etc.)
- ES2 VCAP support (Egress Access Control)
- support for Per-Stream Filtering and Policing (802.1Q,
8.6.5.1)
- Ethernet embedded switches:
- Marvell (mv88e6xxx):
- add MAB (port auth) offload support
- enable PTP receive for mv88e6390
- NXP (ocelot):
- support MAC Merge layer
- support for the the vsc7512 internal copper phys
- Microchip:
- lan9303: convert to PHYLINK
- lan966x: support TC flower filter statistics
- lan937x: PTP support for KSZ9563/KSZ8563 and LAN937x
- lan937x: support Credit Based Shaper configuration
- ksz9477: support Energy Efficient Ethernet
- other:
- qca8k: convert to regmap read/write API, use bulk operations
- rswitch: Improve TX timestamp accuracy
- Intel WiFi (iwlwifi):
- EHT (Wi-Fi 7) rate reporting
- STEP equalizer support: transfer some STEP (connection to radio
on platforms with integrated wifi) related parameters from the
BIOS to the firmware.
- Qualcomm 802.11ax WiFi (ath11k):
- IPQ5018 support
- Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) responder role support
- channel 177 support
- MediaTek WiFi (mt76):
- per-PHY LED support
- mt7996: EHT (Wi-Fi 7) support
- Wireless Ethernet Dispatch (WED) reset support
- switch to using page pool allocator
- RealTek WiFi (rtw89):
- support new version of Bluetooth co-existance
- Mobile:
- rmnet: support TX aggregation"
* tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next: (1872 commits)
page_pool: add a comment explaining the fragment counter usage
net: ethtool: fix __ethtool_dev_mm_supported() implementation
ethtool: pse-pd: Fix double word in comments
xsk: add linux/vmalloc.h to xsk.c
sefltests: netdevsim: wait for devlink instance after netns removal
selftest: fib_tests: Always cleanup before exit
net/mlx5e: Align IPsec ASO result memory to be as required by hardware
net/mlx5e: TC, Set CT miss to the specific ct action instance
net/mlx5e: Rename CHAIN_TO_REG to MAPPED_OBJ_TO_REG
net/mlx5: Refactor tc miss handling to a single function
net/mlx5: Kconfig: Make tc offload depend on tc skb extension
net/sched: flower: Support hardware miss to tc action
net/sched: flower: Move filter handle initialization earlier
net/sched: cls_api: Support hardware miss to tc action
net/sched: Rename user cookie and act cookie
sfc: fix builds without CONFIG_RTC_LIB
sfc: clean up some inconsistent indentings
net/mlx4_en: Introduce flexible array to silence overflow warning
net: lan966x: Fix possible deadlock inside PTP
net/ulp: Remove redundant ->clone() test in inet_clone_ulp().
...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst | 381 |
1 files changed, 381 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst b/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e363fc485 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/powerpc/firmware-assisted-dump.rst @@ -0,0 +1,381 @@ +====================== +Firmware-Assisted Dump +====================== + +July 2011 + +The goal of firmware-assisted dump is to enable the dump of +a crashed system, and to do so from a fully-reset system, and +to minimize the total elapsed time until the system is back +in production use. + +- Firmware-Assisted Dump (FADump) infrastructure is intended to replace + the existing phyp assisted dump. +- Fadump uses the same firmware interfaces and memory reservation model + as phyp assisted dump. +- Unlike phyp dump, FADump exports the memory dump through /proc/vmcore + in the ELF format in the same way as kdump. This helps us reuse the + kdump infrastructure for dump capture and filtering. +- Unlike phyp dump, userspace tool does not need to refer any sysfs + interface while reading /proc/vmcore. +- Unlike phyp dump, FADump allows user to release all the memory reserved + for dump, with a single operation of echo 1 > /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem. +- Once enabled through kernel boot parameter, FADump can be + started/stopped through /sys/kernel/fadump_registered interface (see + sysfs files section below) and can be easily integrated with kdump + service start/stop init scripts. + +Comparing with kdump or other strategies, firmware-assisted +dump offers several strong, practical advantages: + +- Unlike kdump, the system has been reset, and loaded + with a fresh copy of the kernel. In particular, + PCI and I/O devices have been reinitialized and are + in a clean, consistent state. +- Once the dump is copied out, the memory that held the dump + is immediately available to the running kernel. And therefore, + unlike kdump, FADump doesn't need a 2nd reboot to get back + the system to the production configuration. + +The above can only be accomplished by coordination with, +and assistance from the Power firmware. The procedure is +as follows: + +- The first kernel registers the sections of memory with the + Power firmware for dump preservation during OS initialization. + These registered sections of memory are reserved by the first + kernel during early boot. + +- When system crashes, the Power firmware will copy the registered + low memory regions (boot memory) from source to destination area. + It will also save hardware PTE's. + + NOTE: + The term 'boot memory' means size of the low memory chunk + that is required for a kernel to boot successfully when + booted with restricted memory. By default, the boot memory + size will be the larger of 5% of system RAM or 256MB. + Alternatively, user can also specify boot memory size + through boot parameter 'crashkernel=' which will override + the default calculated size. Use this option if default + boot memory size is not sufficient for second kernel to + boot successfully. For syntax of crashkernel= parameter, + refer to Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/kdump.rst. If any + offset is provided in crashkernel= parameter, it will be + ignored as FADump uses a predefined offset to reserve memory + for boot memory dump preservation in case of a crash. + +- After the low memory (boot memory) area has been saved, the + firmware will reset PCI and other hardware state. It will + *not* clear the RAM. It will then launch the bootloader, as + normal. + +- The freshly booted kernel will notice that there is a new node + (rtas/ibm,kernel-dump on pSeries or ibm,opal/dump/mpipl-boot + on OPAL platform) in the device tree, indicating that + there is crash data available from a previous boot. During + the early boot OS will reserve rest of the memory above + boot memory size effectively booting with restricted memory + size. This will make sure that this kernel (also, referred + to as second kernel or capture kernel) will not touch any + of the dump memory area. + +- User-space tools will read /proc/vmcore to obtain the contents + of memory, which holds the previous crashed kernel dump in ELF + format. The userspace tools may copy this info to disk, or + network, nas, san, iscsi, etc. as desired. + +- Once the userspace tool is done saving dump, it will echo + '1' to /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem to release the reserved + memory back to general use, except the memory required for + next firmware-assisted dump registration. + + e.g.:: + + # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem + +Please note that the firmware-assisted dump feature +is only available on POWER6 and above systems on pSeries +(PowerVM) platform and POWER9 and above systems with OP940 +or later firmware versions on PowerNV (OPAL) platform. +Note that, OPAL firmware exports ibm,opal/dump node when +FADump is supported on PowerNV platform. + +On OPAL based machines, system first boots into an intermittent +kernel (referred to as petitboot kernel) before booting into the +capture kernel. This kernel would have minimal kernel and/or +userspace support to process crash data. Such kernel needs to +preserve previously crash'ed kernel's memory for the subsequent +capture kernel boot to process this crash data. Kernel config +option CONFIG_PRESERVE_FA_DUMP has to be enabled on such kernel +to ensure that crash data is preserved to process later. + +-- On OPAL based machines (PowerNV), if the kernel is build with + CONFIG_OPAL_CORE=y, OPAL memory at the time of crash is also + exported as /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/core file. This procfs file is + helpful in debugging OPAL crashes with GDB. The kernel memory + used for exporting this procfs file can be released by echo'ing + '1' to /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/release_core node. + + e.g. + # echo 1 > /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/release_core + +Implementation details: +----------------------- + +During boot, a check is made to see if firmware supports +this feature on that particular machine. If it does, then +we check to see if an active dump is waiting for us. If yes +then everything but boot memory size of RAM is reserved during +early boot (See Fig. 2). This area is released once we finish +collecting the dump from user land scripts (e.g. kdump scripts) +that are run. If there is dump data, then the +/sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem file is created, and the reserved +memory is held. + +If there is no waiting dump data, then only the memory required to +hold CPU state, HPTE region, boot memory dump, FADump header and +elfcore header, is usually reserved at an offset greater than boot +memory size (see Fig. 1). This area is *not* released: this region +will be kept permanently reserved, so that it can act as a receptacle +for a copy of the boot memory content in addition to CPU state and +HPTE region, in the case a crash does occur. + +Since this reserved memory area is used only after the system crash, +there is no point in blocking this significant chunk of memory from +production kernel. Hence, the implementation uses the Linux kernel's +Contiguous Memory Allocator (CMA) for memory reservation if CMA is +configured for kernel. With CMA reservation this memory will be +available for applications to use it, while kernel is prevented from +using it. With this FADump will still be able to capture all of the +kernel memory and most of the user space memory except the user pages +that were present in CMA region:: + + o Memory Reservation during first kernel + + Low memory Top of memory + 0 boot memory size |<--- Reserved dump area --->| | + | | | Permanent Reservation | | + V V | | V + +-----------+-----/ /---+---+----+-------+-----+-----+----+--+ + | | |///|////| DUMP | HDR | ELF |////| | + +-----------+-----/ /---+---+----+-------+-----+-----+----+--+ + | ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ + | | | | | | + \ CPU HPTE / | | + ------------------------------ | | + Boot memory content gets transferred | | + to reserved area by firmware at the | | + time of crash. | | + FADump Header | + (meta area) | + | + | + Metadata: This area holds a metadata structure whose + address is registered with f/w and retrieved in the + second kernel after crash, on platforms that support + tags (OPAL). Having such structure with info needed + to process the crashdump eases dump capture process. + + Fig. 1 + + + o Memory Reservation during second kernel after crash + + Low memory Top of memory + 0 boot memory size | + | |<------------ Crash preserved area ------------>| + V V |<--- Reserved dump area --->| | + +-----------+-----/ /---+---+----+-------+-----+-----+----+--+ + | | |///|////| DUMP | HDR | ELF |////| | + +-----------+-----/ /---+---+----+-------+-----+-----+----+--+ + | | + V V + Used by second /proc/vmcore + kernel to boot + + +---+ + |///| -> Regions (CPU, HPTE & Metadata) marked like this in the above + +---+ figures are not always present. For example, OPAL platform + does not have CPU & HPTE regions while Metadata region is + not supported on pSeries currently. + + Fig. 2 + + +Currently the dump will be copied from /proc/vmcore to a new file upon +user intervention. The dump data available through /proc/vmcore will be +in ELF format. Hence the existing kdump infrastructure (kdump scripts) +to save the dump works fine with minor modifications. KDump scripts on +major Distro releases have already been modified to work seamlessly (no +user intervention in saving the dump) when FADump is used, instead of +KDump, as dump mechanism. + +The tools to examine the dump will be same as the ones +used for kdump. + +How to enable firmware-assisted dump (FADump): +---------------------------------------------- + +1. Set config option CONFIG_FA_DUMP=y and build kernel. +2. Boot into linux kernel with 'fadump=on' kernel cmdline option. + By default, FADump reserved memory will be initialized as CMA area. + Alternatively, user can boot linux kernel with 'fadump=nocma' to + prevent FADump to use CMA. +3. Optionally, user can also set 'crashkernel=' kernel cmdline + to specify size of the memory to reserve for boot memory dump + preservation. + +NOTE: + 1. 'fadump_reserve_mem=' parameter has been deprecated. Instead + use 'crashkernel=' to specify size of the memory to reserve + for boot memory dump preservation. + 2. If firmware-assisted dump fails to reserve memory then it + will fallback to existing kdump mechanism if 'crashkernel=' + option is set at kernel cmdline. + 3. if user wants to capture all of user space memory and ok with + reserved memory not available to production system, then + 'fadump=nocma' kernel parameter can be used to fallback to + old behaviour. + +Sysfs/debugfs files: +-------------------- + +Firmware-assisted dump feature uses sysfs file system to hold +the control files and debugfs file to display memory reserved region. + +Here is the list of files under kernel sysfs: + + /sys/kernel/fadump_enabled + This is used to display the FADump status. + + - 0 = FADump is disabled + - 1 = FADump is enabled + + This interface can be used by kdump init scripts to identify if + FADump is enabled in the kernel and act accordingly. + + /sys/kernel/fadump_registered + This is used to display the FADump registration status as well + as to control (start/stop) the FADump registration. + + - 0 = FADump is not registered. + - 1 = FADump is registered and ready to handle system crash. + + To register FADump echo 1 > /sys/kernel/fadump_registered and + echo 0 > /sys/kernel/fadump_registered for un-register and stop the + FADump. Once the FADump is un-registered, the system crash will not + be handled and vmcore will not be captured. This interface can be + easily integrated with kdump service start/stop. + + /sys/kernel/fadump/mem_reserved + + This is used to display the memory reserved by FADump for saving the + crash dump. + + /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem + This file is available only when FADump is active during + second kernel. This is used to release the reserved memory + region that are held for saving crash dump. To release the + reserved memory echo 1 to it:: + + echo 1 > /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem + + After echo 1, the content of the /sys/kernel/debug/powerpc/fadump_region + file will change to reflect the new memory reservations. + + The existing userspace tools (kdump infrastructure) can be easily + enhanced to use this interface to release the memory reserved for + dump and continue without 2nd reboot. + +Note: /sys/kernel/fadump_release_opalcore sysfs has moved to + /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/release_core + + /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/release_core + + This file is available only on OPAL based machines when FADump is + active during capture kernel. This is used to release the memory + used by the kernel to export /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/core file. To + release this memory, echo '1' to it: + + echo 1 > /sys/firmware/opal/mpipl/release_core + +Note: The following FADump sysfs files are deprecated. + ++----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ +| Deprecated | Alternative | ++----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ +| /sys/kernel/fadump_enabled | /sys/kernel/fadump/enabled | ++----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ +| /sys/kernel/fadump_registered | /sys/kernel/fadump/registered | ++----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ +| /sys/kernel/fadump_release_mem | /sys/kernel/fadump/release_mem | ++----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ + +Here is the list of files under powerpc debugfs: +(Assuming debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug directory.) + + /sys/kernel/debug/powerpc/fadump_region + This file shows the reserved memory regions if FADump is + enabled otherwise this file is empty. The output format + is:: + + <region>: [<start>-<end>] <reserved-size> bytes, Dumped: <dump-size> + + and for kernel DUMP region is: + + DUMP: Src: <src-addr>, Dest: <dest-addr>, Size: <size>, Dumped: # bytes + + e.g. + Contents when FADump is registered during first kernel:: + + # cat /sys/kernel/debug/powerpc/fadump_region + CPU : [0x0000006ffb0000-0x0000006fff001f] 0x40020 bytes, Dumped: 0x0 + HPTE: [0x0000006fff0020-0x0000006fff101f] 0x1000 bytes, Dumped: 0x0 + DUMP: [0x0000006fff1020-0x0000007fff101f] 0x10000000 bytes, Dumped: 0x0 + + Contents when FADump is active during second kernel:: + + # cat /sys/kernel/debug/powerpc/fadump_region + CPU : [0x0000006ffb0000-0x0000006fff001f] 0x40020 bytes, Dumped: 0x40020 + HPTE: [0x0000006fff0020-0x0000006fff101f] 0x1000 bytes, Dumped: 0x1000 + DUMP: [0x0000006fff1020-0x0000007fff101f] 0x10000000 bytes, Dumped: 0x10000000 + : [0x00000010000000-0x0000006ffaffff] 0x5ffb0000 bytes, Dumped: 0x5ffb0000 + + +NOTE: + Please refer to Documentation/filesystems/debugfs.rst on + how to mount the debugfs filesystem. + + +TODO: +----- + - Need to come up with the better approach to find out more + accurate boot memory size that is required for a kernel to + boot successfully when booted with restricted memory. + - The FADump implementation introduces a FADump crash info structure + in the scratch area before the ELF core header. The idea of introducing + this structure is to pass some important crash info data to the second + kernel which will help second kernel to populate ELF core header with + correct data before it gets exported through /proc/vmcore. The current + design implementation does not address a possibility of introducing + additional fields (in future) to this structure without affecting + compatibility. Need to come up with the better approach to address this. + + The possible approaches are: + + 1. Introduce version field for version tracking, bump up the version + whenever a new field is added to the structure in future. The version + field can be used to find out what fields are valid for the current + version of the structure. + 2. Reserve the area of predefined size (say PAGE_SIZE) for this + structure and have unused area as reserved (initialized to zero) + for future field additions. + + The advantage of approach 1 over 2 is we don't need to reserve extra space. + +Author: Mahesh Salgaonkar <mahesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com> + +This document is based on the original documentation written for phyp + +assisted dump by Linas Vepstas and Manish Ahuja. |