Dave, You are faster than me at fixing crash:-) I was just about to start on the part for kmem_cache_len_nodes... The patch fixes the problem on my example dump which previously said: ===== please wait... (gathering kmem slab cache data) crash: page excluded: kernel virtual address: ffff88022457a000 type: "kmem_cache_s buffer" crash: unable to initialize kmem slab cache subsystem ===== It now says: ===== please wait... (gathering kmem slab cache data) kmem_cache_downsize: SIZE(kmem_cache_s): 872 cache_cache.buffer_size: 384 kmem_cache_downsize: nr_node_ids: 2 =====

In the meantime, I remembered "--zero_exclude", which makes for a slightly dangerous workaround for the problem. It fills in the unnecessarily-accessed missing pages with zeros. The output of "kmem -s" and "kmem -S" on my problem dump is the same between your patched version and the old version running with --zero_exclude. (I don't normally think of using zero_exclude because it can mask both kernel bugs and makedumpfile bugs...)

Thanks for making that patch. Is there anything left to fix in crash ?-)