Re: [Crash-utility] Re: crash enhancements proposal

Maneesh Soni wrote: >Hi Dave, > >Following is a list of a few proposed improvements to crash utility though >for most of the items there are no names associated. > >Please let us know if these look useful or not. And if found appropriate >would it be possible for you to merge these with the crash todo list. > >Thanks to Badari Pulavarty, Richard Moore and Vara Prasad for the inputs. > > > > >DESCRIPTION: > Code restructuring: > - move as much code for advanced commands to libraries so that > crash is at least able to open the dump image and perform minimal > set of commands like bt, dump dmesg log, disassemble etc. irrespective > of kernel version. > - code is hard to read & understand - need to re-write some of the > basic subsystems like memory mapping, pagetable management etc > >RESOLUTION STATUS: > Work-in-progress by Dave Wilder <dwilder(a)us.ibm.com&gt; and > Maneesh Soni <maneesh(a)in.ibm.com&gt; > > > I don't quite understand how moving code to libraries is going to achieve the goal here. Things in some of the various *_init() functions could certainly be streamlined (or skipped) in order to make it more likely to make it to the first prompt. For example, the task table initialization could be made to simply fill in the context data for just the panic task. (But it almost sounds like you just want to use gdb alone for the minimal set of commands you've listed?) As far as "re-writes" are concerned, please keep in mind the necessity of backwards-compatibility. I'd much rather keep the current code -- that's known to work -- in place, and if you come up with something new, or re-shuffled, make it only callable when the kernel is of a known kernel version or later. The point is, let's not just re-invent the wheel just for purpose of re-inventing the wheel.