[Crash-utility] RFC: Improving crash's search speed

I like using the search command in crash, but noticed that it takes much longer than my own dump search tools. As an example, on a level 31 (lots of exclusions) dump from a 4 GB x86_64 system, this search command in (benchmarked with a command file) finds these results and takes almost 2 minutes: $ cat cmdfile2 search -k 0xffff88012491b240 $ time crash-5.1.1 kernel_link dump.201101161845 <cmdfile2 ... ffff88012491b280: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca18: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca20: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca30: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca88: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126eca148: ffff88012491b240 ffffc9000468d148: ffff88012491b240 real 1m52.834s user 1m50.571s sys 0m2.220s When you watch it search, the first 6 results come out in a few seconds, then nothing happens for a long time. The first six are coming from searching the identity mapped region which covers every page in the dump. Note the forms of the addresses for the first six hits. The majority of the search time is spent going through the kernel vmalloc address range and checking to see if pages are mapped to any of those addresses. Any page searched through these addresses should have already been searched in the identity mapped search. So, for the last hit: (ffffc9000468d148: ffff88012491b240), converting to physical, and then back to identity-mapped virtual gives: crash-5.1.1> vtop 0xffffc9000468d148 VIRTUAL PHYSICAL ffffc9000468d148 126eca148 ... And: crash-5.1.1> ptov 0x126eca148 VIRTUAL PHYSICAL ffff880126eca148 126eca148 And so the hit at 0xffffc9000468d148 was already caught by the earlier hit in the identity-mapped range: ffff880126eca148: ffff88012491b240 If you don't want to wait, you can find the vmalloc_start_addr from "help -m" and use it to restrict the search range: $ cat cmdfile2a search -k -e 0xffffc90000000000 0xffff88012491b240 $ time crash-5.1.1 dump.201101161845 kernel_link <cmdfile2a ... ffff88012491b280: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca18: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca20: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca30: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126dcca88: ffff88012491b240 ffff880126eca148: ffff88012491b240 real 0m4.243s user 0m4.088s sys 0m0.156s This command finishes with the first 6 hits in 4 seconds. Once you have those hits, if you have to know if any virtual mappings exist, you can use kmem on the physical address: crash-5.1.1> vtop 0xffff880126eca148 VIRTUAL PHYSICAL ffff880126eca148 126eca148 ... crash-5.1.1> kmem -v 126eca148 VM_STRUCT ADDRESS RANGE SIZE ffff8801277f8180 ffffc90004682000 - 1052672 Which shows the virtual range that contains the mapping for the page. Then this command takes no time: crash-5.1.1> search -k -s ffffc90004682000 -e ffffc90004783000 ffff88012491b240 ffffc9000468d148: ffff88012491b240 I think the drastic reduction of search time from 2 minutes to 4 seconds is interesting enough to warrant a shortcut. The attached patch implements the -K option that is the same as doing "-k -e <vmalloc_start_addr>". Comments? Bob Montgomery