Another thing to check -- there are two places that print that
"cannot determine..." error message.  Can you verify that it's
happening in refresh_hlist_task_table()?  That's where the
previous reporter said that it happened on his system, but I
just want to make absolutely sure.
Thanks,
  Dave
Dave Anderson wrote:
 Tejasvi Aswathanarayana wrote:
> Crash exits with an error "cannot determine pid_hash array
> dimensions". Looking at the crash change log, it appears that it was
> fixed in 4.0-2.24 for the 2.6.17 kernel. The core I have is of a
> 2.6.16.13 xenified kernel. Is the fix even relevant ?
>
> <output>
> $ ./crash vmlinux-2.6.16.13-xen test.core
>
> crash 4.0-3.5
> Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006  Red Hat, Inc.
> Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2006  IBM Corporation
> Copyright (C) 1999-2006  Hewlett-Packard Co
> Copyright (C) 2005  Fujitsu Limited
> Copyright (C) 2005  NEC Corporation
> Copyright (C) 1999, 2002  Silicon Graphics, Inc.
> Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002  Mission Critical Linux, Inc.
> This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License,
> and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under
> certain conditions.  Enter "help copying" to see the conditions.
> This program has absolutely no warranty.  Enter "help warranty" for
details.
>
> GNU gdb 6.1
> Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
> welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
> Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
> There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for
details.
> This GDB was configured as "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu"...
>
> please wait... (gathering task table data)
> crash: cannot determine pid_hash array dimensions
> </output>
>
> Is there a way I can get crash's source at releases  4.0-2.24 and
> 4.0-2.23 so that I can try a fix for this kernel in case it is a
> specific kernel fix  ?
>
> Thanks
> -Tejasvi
 Interesting -- I got a private message yesterday from another
 2.6.16-era xen user with the same problem.
 Anyway, over time the manner of pid table handling has
 changed several times, and so to handle the various manners,
 the crash utility's task_init() function assigns an appropriate
 function to gather all pids/tasks running on the system.
 You're referring to this entry in the changelog:
 4.0-2.24 - Fix for 2.6.17 kernels that do not use "pgdat_list" memory node
            list header, which would cause crash to fail during initialization
            with a "crash: cannot resolve: pgdat_list" error message.
            (anderson(a)redhat.com)
          - Fix for 2.6.17 kernels that have re-worked the kernel pid_hash
            handling, which would cause crash to fail during initialization
            with a "crash: cannot determine pid_hash array dimensions" error
            message.  (anderson(a)redhat.com)
 ...
 The change above implemented yet another pid hash handler
 called refresh_hlist_task_table_v2(), which as the comments
 above indicate, was required for 2.6.17 kernels.  In crash
 version 4.0-2.24, a new refresh_hlist_task_table_v2() function
 was added to replace refresh_hlist_task_table(), to account
 for this change:
 /*
  *  2.6.17 replaced:
  *    static struct hlist_head *pid_hash[PIDTYPE_MAX];
  *  with
  *     static struct hlist_head *pid_hash;
  */
 So, for starters, can you display how "pid_hash" is
 declared in your kernel?
 Unfortunately the only 2.6.16-era x86_64 kernel dumpfile that
 I have on-hand as a reference is an early kdump dumpfile,
 (non-xen) which selects the older refresh_hlist_task_table():
 crash> sys
       KERNEL: /usr/dumps/kdump/vmlinux (2.6.16-20-smp)
     DUMPFILE: /usr/dumps/kdump/vmcore
         CPUS: 2
         DATE: Mon Apr 24 11:02:03 2006
       UPTIME: 00:31:04
 LOAD AVERAGE: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
        TASKS: 63
     NODENAME: elm3a242
      RELEASE: 2.6.16-20-smp
      VERSION: #1 SMP Mon Apr 10 04:51:13 UTC 2006
      MACHINE: x86_64  (3000 Mhz)
       MEMORY: 4.6 GB
        PANIC: "SysRq : Trigger a crashdump"
 crash> help -t
            current: 1678f60 [62]
               .pid: 3235
              .comm: "bash"
              .task: ffff810121a7d810
       .thread_info: ffff81011d826000
         .processor: 1
             .ptask: ffff810121d91790
         .mm_struct: ffff810122f9eb00
           .tc_next: 0
      context_array: 1677df0
 refresh_task_table: refresh_hlist_task_table()
 ...
 This is the code sequence in task_init() that selects
 refresh_hlist_task_table() or refresh_hlist_task_table_v2():
       } else {
               tt->pidhash_addr = symbol_value("pid_hash");
               if (!get_array_length("pid_hash", NULL, sizeof(void *))
&&
                   VALID_STRUCT(pid_link))
                       tt->refresh_task_table = refresh_hlist_task_table_v2;
               else
                       tt->refresh_task_table = refresh_hlist_task_table;
       }
 Since you are breaking down on initialization, can you put
 some debug code in place that displays?:
 1. the output of the get_array_length("pid_hash",...) call, and
 2. the output of VALID_STRUCT(pid_link)
 Something must be slightly different between the mainline
 and xen 2.6.16-era kernels.
 What appears to be happening is that refresh_hlist_task_table()
 is being selected, but in that function, this subsequent call
 is failing:
         if (!(plen = get_array_length("pid_hash", NULL, sizeof(void *))))
                 error(FATAL, "cannot determine pid_hash array dimensions\n");
 Alternatively, if you want to make the vmlinux/dumpfile pair
 available to me, I can take a look at it.
 Thanks,
   Dave
      
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