RE: [Crash-utility] user-space enhancements

There was a group at IBM (Stefan Schlosser <sschloss(a)de.ibm.com>) a few years ago which set up stuff to generate a elf corefile for a user space process for lcrash. We ported it to crash as a loadable extension, but only did the i386 stuff. If there's enough interest we could see about liberating our internal code. -castor -----Original Message----- From: crash-utility-bounces(a)redhat.com [mailto:crash-utility-bounces@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Bradshaw, James Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 12:58 PM To: Discussion list for crash utility usage, maintenance and development Subject: RE: [Crash-utility] user-space enhancements Right. To be able to examine user space, you'd have to build an elf core file by processing the desired task structure in the kdump file, find all the user pages, etc.--essentially what elf_core_dump() does in a running kernel. Then you could use gdb offline or the embedded gdb. I understand your desire not to burden crash with user space stuff, although the extensions facility seems to provide a mechanism for cleanly excluding such functionality from the standard configuration. Just a thought. -----Original Message----- From: crash-utility-bounces(a)redhat.com [mailto:crash-utility-bounces@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Dave Anderson Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:25 PM To: Discussion list for crash utility usage, maintenance and development Subject: Re: [Crash-utility] user-space enhancements ----- "James Bradshaw" <jbradsha(a)enterasys.com&gt; wrote: The items in the TODO list, with the exception of the first one about the "search" command, are all essentially "wish-list" items. They were originally requested to be put there by IBM several years ago when the http://people.redhat.com/anderson site was instantiated as the "upstream" source of the crash utility. The only item that I'm aware of that somebody is actually looking into is the one regarding "local variables", where I believe the guy looking into it is part of the IBM LTC in India. I don't expect much to come out of it, though, because for one thing it presumes that the crash utility's backtrace frame information is etched in stone -- and with the exception of ia64 which has unwind information actually built into the kernel -- the backtrace is essentially a "best-guess" operation. So trying to pull local arguments (or function arguments for that matter) from a dubious source doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As far as a user-space backtrace, I still think the way to go is to work on creating a core dump file of the requested task, and then use gdb externally on that core file, completely outside of the crash utility. Trying to overload the crash utility with a bunch of user-space stuff is something I don't have a lot of interest in. Dave -- Crash-utility mailing list Crash-utility(a)redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/crash-utility -- Crash-utility mailing list Crash-utility(a)redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/crash-utility This email and any attachments thereto may contain private, confidential, and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, copying, or distribution of this email (or any attachments) by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copies of this email and any attachments thereto.