Re: [Crash-utility] dev command deteriorates with new kernels
On Mon, 2009-06-08 at 19:50 +0000, Dave Anderson wrote:
Regarding blkext 259
Correction -- it does appear in the major_names[] array, in a 2.6.30
kernel for example, like this:
crash> p * major_names[4]
$51 = {
next = 0x0,
major = 259,
name = "blkext\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000"
}
where it appears to be the only major_names[] entry whose "major" value
doesn't equal the index into the array (i.e., 259 != 4). But the
bdev_map.probes[4] entry is unused.
The blkext is supposed to get used as soon as someone wants to put more
than 15 partitions on an sd disk. (Explanation at
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/701825)
Then the upper partitions will appear as minors of 259. When that
starts happening more, having a way to see it might (*might*) be
interesting.
> At this point I'm about ready to deprecate the whole
command... ;-)
And at this point I couldn't really argue much :-) I obviously hadn't
used the command for a while. I was casting around, hoping it would
maybe help me find the diskstats stuff for the block devices. I was
trying to answer a question like "How much disk activity was going on
before this crashed?"
When I tried the dev command and it bombed at the chrdev stuff before
getting to the blkdev stuff, I was motivated to get it going enough to
see if it would help answer my question, but it doesn't print anything
(like hd_struct pointers) that could help me with my problem. But I
figured someone had once wanted that device info, so it might as well
work...
Bob Montgomery