[Crash-utility] Re: Error when analysing dump on 2.6.21.4 kernel

Ankita Garg wrote: I had a discussion with Ankita about this problem. This is what i think is happening. This x86-64 kernel has CONFIG_NUMA off with SPARSEMEM support. The failure occurs as line 11738 in memory.c [ This is with latest crash ] crash: invalid structure member offset: pglist_data_node_mem_map FILE: memory.c LINE: 11738 FUNCTION: dump_memory_nodes() Looking at the crash source here is the code in question : 11728 if (IS_SPARSEMEM()) { 11729 zone_mem_map = 0; 11730 zone_start_mapnr = 0; 11731 if (zone_size) { 11732 phys = PTOB(zone_start_pfn); 11733 zone_start_mapnr = phys/PAGESIZE(); 11734 } 11735 11736 } else if (!(vt->flags & NODES) && 11737 INVALID_MEMBER(zone_zone_mem_map)) { 11738 readmem(pgdat+OFFSET(pglist_data_node_mem_map), ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 11739 KVADDR, &zone_mem_map, sizeof(void *), 11740 "contig_page_data mem_map",FAULT_ON_ERROR); 11741 if (zone_size) 11742 zone_mem_map += cum_zone_size * SIZE(page); The code is trying to read pglist_data_node_mem_map value which does not exist. [Since CONFIG_NUMA is off]. It should have entered the if (IS_SPARSEMEM()) condition [ line 11728 ] since SPARSEMEM is enabled for this kernel. The flag value of SPARSEMEM is set by this code in memory.c 558 if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_map")) { 559 get_symbol_data("mem_map", sizeof(char *), &vt->mem_map); 560 vt->flags |= FLATMEM; 561 } else if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_section")) 562 vt->flags |= SPARSEMEM; 563 else 564 vt->flags |= DISCONTIGMEM; But what i found was SPARSEMEM flag is not set, instead FLATMEM is set as mem_map symbol exist in this particular kernel.[ mem_section kernel symbol is also present in this kernel] [crash-4.0-4.8]# cat /boot/System.map | grep mem_map ffffffff8072dab0 B mem_map [crash-4.0-4.8]# cat /boot/System.map | grep mem_section ffffffff8072e800 B mem_section is not defined. Which is the case here. I am not a mm expert so i can't tell what to make out of this situation where both mem_map and mem_section kernel symbol exist. Anyone ?? Anyway as for the crash problem this could be fixed by rearranging the above code as follows: - if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_map")) { + if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_section")) + vt->flags |= SPARSEMEM; + else if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_map")) { get_symbol_data("mem_map", sizeof(char *), &vt->mem_map); vt->flags |= FLATMEM; - } else if (kernel_symbol_exists("mem_section")) - vt->flags |= SPARSEMEM; - else + } else But since i am not very sure about the mm code, there might be a better way to fix this. Thanks -Sachin