[Crash-utility] Re: invalid kernel virtual address: cc08 type: "cpu number (per_cpu)"
----- "Bob Montgomery" <bob.montgomery(a)hp.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 14:52 +0000, Dave Anderson wrote:
> ----- "Bob Montgomery" <bob.montgomery(a)hp.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a dump from a 2.6.31-based x86_64 system where the number of
> > "possible" cpus equals the system's NR_CPUS (32).
> > On that system, the __per_cpu_offset table in the kernel consists of 32
> > valid offset pointers.
> I have a similar-but-different fix queued for this, but instead of
> checking for a NULL kt->__per_cpu_offset[i] entry, it changes the
> readmem() call to RETURN_ON_ERROR|QUIET instead of FAULT_ON_ERROR
> like this:
>
> if (!readmem(symbol_value("per_cpu__cpu_number") +
> kt->__per_cpu_offset[i],
> KVADDR, &cpunumber, sizeof(int),
> "cpu number (per_cpu)", QUIET|RETURN_ON_ERROR))
> break;
> That should prevent the failure you're seeing.
I did that first, and thought it was sort of cheating :-)
Sort of. But at that point in time we're still kind of blindly
wading around in the murk trying to figure out what we're
running on...
> But another question is in the (extremely) rare circumstance of a
> non-CONFIG_SMP kernel. In that case, the kt->__per_cpu_offset[] array
> would be all NULL, and the symbol_value("per_cpu__cpu_number")
> call would return the qualified unity-mapped address. So the
> virtual address calculation should work in x86_64_per_cpu_init(),
> and the loop wouldn't even be entered in x86_64_get_smp_cpus()
>
> That being said, I don't think I've seen a recent x86_64 kernel
> that was not compiled CONFIG_SMP, so I can't confirm that it's
> ever been tested.
>
> So for sanity's sake, maybe your patch should also be applied,
> but should also check if the "i" index is non-zero?
So like this?
+ if (i && (kt->__per_cpu_offset[i] == NULL))
+ break;
Yes.
So it's always ok to try the readmem on the first element of
the array. And the RETURN_ON_ERROR would deal with something going
wrong with that, although that case would presumably be a real
problem with the dump, right? (cpus == 0)
Most likely yes. The motivation for my fix was due to a failure
attempting to readmem() a legitimate virtual address that was an
an excluded page from a makedumpfile-generated dump. If I recall
correctly, it was an in-house kexec-tools bugzilla, but I can't
find it.
Dave