linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v5] ramoops: use pstore interface

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Message-ID: <CAGXu5jLEn-+hnyz5DHxw9uMfN6Uo-=0mXsrhuvJ3WwQKki1nYg@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:11:26 -0700
From:	Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To:	Marco Stornelli <marco.stornelli@...il.com>
Cc:	"Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@...el.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	"shuahkhan@...il.com" <shuahkhan@...il.com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5] ramoops: use pstore interface

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:34 AM, Marco Stornelli
<marco.stornelli@...il.com> wrote:
> Il 09/04/2012 23:42, Luck, Tony ha scritto:
>
>>> The patch breaks ramoops module unloading.  Tony says there's "no
>>> credible end-user case" for this and Marco promptly provided one,
>>> which was ignored.
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure that I understood Marco's use case. He said:
>>
>>> First of all ramoops was born mainly for debug purpose and
>>> to help the maintainability of a product. I used it in systems
>>> where the uptime (so no reboot) was important. So it can be
>>> very useful for me load the module, gather logs and unload it
>>> for example. A kernel panic is not recoverable so the reboot
>>> is needed but it's not always true for a kernel oops.
>>
>>
>> In the non-crashed oops case ... aren't all the logs you need
>> in /var/log/messages?
>>
>> -Tony
>
>
> Maybe you right, but it could be useful to have a "single log point"
> especially for automatic/semi-automatic log gathering. I'm not sure we can
> *always* read from messages in case of non-crashed oops. Sure, it will be
> possible after a reboot, but if /var was mounted with tmpfs (on embedded
> systems it's possible :)) we have no log.
>
> PS: It's only a brainstorming on all the possible situation :)

Do you feel that this lack of unloading is still a sufficient reason
to NAK the ramoops patch?

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
ChromeOS Security
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