From: Dave Anderson <anderson(a)redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [Crash-utility] xendump image with full-vitualized domain
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:36:38 -0500
 Kazuo Moriwaka wrote:
 
 > Hi,
 >
 > I tried to analise full-virtualized domain's dump image with crash.
 > It abortes with following message.
 >
 > $ crash System.map-2.6.8-2-386 vmlinux-2.6.8-2-386 2006-1110-1141.38-guest2.4.core
 > (snip)
 > crash: cannot determine vcpu_guest_context.ctrlreg offset
 >
 > Full-virtualized domain's kernel doeesn't have any information about
 > xen-hypervisor, it also doesn't have struct vcpu_guest_context.
 > I'll put kernels and xendump core files at following for reference.
 >
 > 
http://people.valinux.co.jp/~moriwaka/domUcore/
 >   host.tar.gz  - xen hypervisor and dom0 kernel(for amd64)
 >   full-virtualized-guest.tar.gz - domU kernel(for i386) and dump image
 >                                   taken by 'xm dump-core' command.
 >
 > any ideas?
 
 No surprise here -- there's absolutely no crash utility support for
 xendumps of fully-virtualized kernels.
 
 Much of the information that crash uses to find its way
 around a xendump currently depends upon information
 *inside* the para-virtualized kernel.  In your attempt above,
 it needs data structure information for the vcpu_guest_context
 structure, in order to get a cr3 value -- which it uses to find the
 phys_to_machine_mapping[] array built into the kernel. 
This headers' vcpu_guest_context.ctrlreg points just a dummy
pagetable.  (in that file, mfn 12122.) 
 But obviously there is no phys_to_machine_mapping[]
 array in fully-virtualized kernels, so no pseudo-to-physical
 address translations can be made. 
Yes.  I read some of code, and now I think this xendump image header
doesn't have enough information to find shadow page table.  Shadow
page table pointed by vcpu.arch.shadow.* in hypervisor, but xendump
doesn't have them.  If threre is whole-machine dump, converting can be
one solution.
 I'm not sure what the best solution is for fully-virtualized
 kernels.
 
 Perhaps what is needed is yet another tool that takes
 a xendump of a fully-virtualized kernel, and turns it into
 a recognizable vmcore?
 
 Whatever it is, an alternative manner of translating the
 "physical" addresses in the fully-virtualized kernel (which
 become pseudo-physical addresses in the xen environment)
 and find them in the xendump. 
Xen's roadmap says that it will support full-virtualized domain's
save/restore in a few months; while supporting them, xendump format
will be changed to contain enough info to re-build domain's
pseudo-physical memory area. Just waiting for them is one way.
-- 
Kazuo Moriwaka <moriwaka(a)valinux.co.jp>