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Linux kernel stable tree
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Testing from the XFS folk revealed that there is still too much I/O from the end of the LRU in kswapd. Previously it was considered acceptable by VM people for a small number of pages to be written back from reclaim with testing generally showing about 0.3% of pages reclaimed were written back (higher if memory was low). That writing back a small number of pages is ok has been heavily disputed for quite some time and Dave Chinner explained it well; It doesn't have to be a very high number to be a problem. IO is orders of magnitude slower than the CPU time it takes to flush a page, so the cost of making a bad flush decision is very high. And single page writeback from the LRU is almost always a bad flush decision. To complicate matters, filesystems respond very differently to requests from reclaim according to Christoph Hellwig; xfs tries to write it back if the requester is kswapd ext4 ignores the request if it's a delayed allocation btrfs ignores the request As a result, each filesystem has different performance characteristics when under memory pressure and there are many pages being dirtied. In some cases, the request is ignored entirely so the VM cannot depend on the IO being dispatched. The objective of this series is to reduce writing of filesystem-backed pages from reclaim, play nicely with writeback that is already in progress and throttle reclaim appropriately when writeback pages are encountered. The assumption is that the flushers will always write pages faster than if reclaim issues the IO. A secondary goal is to avoid the problem whereby direct reclaim splices two potentially deep call stacks together. There is a potential new problem as reclaim has less control over how long before a page in a particularly zone or container is cleaned and direct reclaimers depend on kswapd or flusher threads to do the necessary work. However, as filesystems sometimes ignore direct reclaim requests already, it is not expected to be a serious issue. Patch 1 disables writeback of filesystem pages from direct reclaim entirely. Anonymous pages are still written. Patch 2 removes dead code in lumpy reclaim as it is no longer able to synchronously write pages. This hurts lumpy reclaim but there is an expectation that compaction is used for hugepage allocations these days and lumpy reclaim's days are numbered. Patches 3-4 add warnings to XFS and ext4 if called from direct reclaim. With patch 1, this "never happens" and is intended to catch regressions in this logic in the future. Patch 5 disables writeback of filesystem pages from kswapd unless the priority is raised to the point where kswapd is considered to be in trouble. Patch 6 throttles reclaimers if too many dirty pages are being encountered and the zones or backing devices are congested. Patch 7 invalidates dirty pages found at the end of the LRU so they are reclaimed quickly after being written back rather than waiting for a reclaimer to find them I consider this series to be orthogonal to the writeback work but it is worth noting that the writeback work affects the viability of patch 8 in particular. I tested this on ext4 and xfs using fs_mark, a simple writeback test based on dd and a micro benchmark that does a streaming write to a large mapping (exercises use-once LRU logic) followed by streaming writes to a mix of anonymous and file-backed mappings. The command line for fs_mark when botted with 512M looked something like ./fs_mark -d /tmp/fsmark-2676 -D 100 -N 150 -n 150 -L 25 -t 1 -S0 -s 10485760 The number of files was adjusted depending on the amount of available memory so that the files created was about 3xRAM. For multiple threads, the -d switch is specified multiple times. The test machine is x86-64 with an older generation of AMD processor with 4 cores. The underlying storage was 4 disks configured as RAID-0 as this was the best configuration of storage I had available. Swap is on a separate disk. Dirty ratio was tuned to 40% instead of the default of 20%. Testing was run with and without monitors to both verify that the patches were operating as expected and that any performance gain was real and not due to interference from monitors. Here is a summary of results based on testing XFS. 512M1P-xfs Files/s mean 32.69 ( 0.00%) 34.44 ( 5.08%) 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 51.41 48.29 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 114.09 108.61 512M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 113.46 109.34 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 62% 63% 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 56% 61% 512M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 44% 42% 512M-xfs Files/s mean 30.78 ( 0.00%) 35.94 (14.36%) 512M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 56.08 48.90 512M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 112.22 98.13 512M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 219.15 196.67 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 54% 56% 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 54% 55% 512M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 45% 44% 512M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 30.31 ( 0.00%) 33.33 ( 9.06%) 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 63.26 55.88 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 100.90 90.25 512M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 261.73 255.38 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 49% 50% 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 54% 56% 512M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 37% 36% 512M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 60.89 ( 0.00%) 65.22 ( 6.64%) 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 67.47 58.25 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 103.22 90.89 512M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 237.09 198.82 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 45% 46% 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 53% 55% 512M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 33% 33% Up until 512-4X, the FSmark improvements were statistically significant. For the 4X and 16X tests the results were within standard deviations but just barely. The time to completion for all tests is improved which is an important result. In general, kswapd efficiency is not affected by skipping dirty pages. 1024M1P-xfs Files/s mean 39.09 ( 0.00%) 41.15 ( 5.01%) 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 84.14 80.41 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 210.77 184.78 1024M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 162.00 160.34 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 69% 75% 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 71% 77% 1024M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 43% 44% 1024M-xfs Files/s mean 35.45 ( 0.00%) 37.00 ( 4.19%) 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 94.59 91.00 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 229.84 195.08 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 405.38 440.29 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 79% 71% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 74% 74% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 42% 1024M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 32.63 ( 0.00%) 35.05 ( 6.90%) 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 103.33 97.74 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 204.48 178.57 1024M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 528.38 511.88 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 81% 70% 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 73% 72% 1024M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 38% 1024M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 42.65 ( 0.00%) 42.97 ( 0.74%) 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 103.11 99.11 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 200.83 178.24 1024M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 397.35 459.82 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 84% 69% 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 74% 73% 1024M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 39% 40% All FSMark tests up to 16X had statistically significant improvements. For the most part, tests are completing faster with the exception of the streaming writes to a mixture of anonymous and file-backed mappings which were slower in two cases In the cases where the mmap-strm tests were slower, there was more swapping due to dirty pages being skipped. The number of additional pages swapped is almost identical to the fewer number of pages written from reclaim. In other words, roughly the same number of pages were reclaimed but swapping was slower. As the test is a bit unrealistic and stresses memory heavily, the small shift is acceptable. 4608M1P-xfs Files/s mean 29.75 ( 0.00%) 30.96 ( 3.91%) 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 512.01 492.15 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 618.18 566.24 4608M1P-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 488.05 465.07 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 93% 86% 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 84% 4608M1P-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 46% 45% 4608M-xfs Files/s mean 27.60 ( 0.00%) 28.85 ( 4.33%) 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 555.96 532.34 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 659.72 571.85 4608M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1082.57 1146.38 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 89% 91% 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 82% 4608M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 48% 46% 4608M-4X-xfs Files/s mean 26.00 ( 0.00%) 27.47 ( 5.35%) 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 592.91 564.00 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 616.65 575.07 4608M-4X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1773.02 1631.53 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 90% 94% 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 87% 82% 4608M-4X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 43% 43% 4608M-16X-xfs Files/s mean 26.07 ( 0.00%) 26.42 ( 1.32%) 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 602.69 585.78 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 606.60 573.81 4608M-16X-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 1549.75 1441.86 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 98% 98% 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 88% 82% 4608M-16X-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 44% 42% Unlike the other tests, the fsmark results are not statistically significant but the min and max times are both improved and for the most part, tests completed faster. There are other indications that this is an improvement as well. For example, in the vast majority of cases, there were fewer pages scanned by direct reclaim implying in many cases that stalls due to direct reclaim are reduced. KSwapd is scanning more due to skipping dirty pages which is unfortunate but the CPU usage is still acceptable In an earlier set of tests, I used blktrace and in almost all cases throughput throughout the entire test was higher. However, I ended up discarding those results as recording blktrace data was too heavy for my liking. On a laptop, I plugged in a USB stick and ran a similar tests of tests using it as backing storage. A desktop environment was running and for the entire duration of the tests, firefox and gnome terminal were launching and exiting to vaguely simulate a user. 1024M-xfs Files/s mean 0.41 ( 0.00%) 0.44 ( 6.82%) 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time fsmark 2053.52 1641.03 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time simple-wb 1229.53 768.05 1024M-xfs Elapsed Time mmap-strm 4126.44 4597.03 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency fsmark 84% 85% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency simple-wb 92% 81% 1024M-xfs Kswapd efficiency mmap-strm 60% 51% 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms fsmark 5404.53 4473.87 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms simple-wb 2541.35 1453.54 1024M-xfs Avg wait ms mmap-strm 3400.25 3852.53 The mmap-strm results were hurt because firefox launching had a tendency to push the test out of memory. On the postive side, firefox launched marginally faster with the patches applied. Time to completion for many tests was faster but more importantly - the "Avg wait" time as measured by iostat was far lower implying the system would be more responsive. It was also the case that "Avg wait ms" on the root filesystem was lower. I tested it manually and while the system felt slightly more responsive while copying data to a USB stick, it was marginal enough that it could be my imagination. This patch: do not writeback filesystem pages in direct reclaim. When kswapd is failing to keep zones above the min watermark, a process will enter direct reclaim in the same manner kswapd does. If a dirty page is encountered during the scan, this page is written to backing storage using mapping->writepage. This causes two problems. First, it can result in very deep call stacks, particularly if the target storage or filesystem are complex. Some filesystems ignore write requests from direct reclaim as a result. The second is that a single-page flush is inefficient in terms of IO. While there is an expectation that the elevator will merge requests, this does not always happen. Quoting Christoph Hellwig; The elevator has a relatively small window it can operate on, and can never fix up a bad large scale writeback pattern. This patch prevents direct reclaim writing back filesystem pages by checking if current is kswapd. Anonymous pages are still written to swap as there is not the equivalent of a flusher thread for anonymous pages. If the dirty pages cannot be written back, they are placed back on the LRU lists. There is now a direct dependency on dirty page balancing to prevent too many pages in the system being dirtied which would prevent reclaim making forward progress. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> Cc: Johannes Weiner <jweiner@redhat.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: Alex Elder <aelder@sgi.com> Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
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| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
| REPORTING-BUGS | ||
Linux kernel release 3.x <http://kernel.org/>
These are the release notes for Linux version 3. Read them carefully,
as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong.
WHAT IS LINUX?
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by
Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across
the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix,
including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand
loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management,
and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
accompanying COPYING file for more details.
ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN?
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher),
today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and
UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Cell,
IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS,
Xtensa, Tilera TILE, AVR32 and Renesas M32R architectures.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures
as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the
GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has
also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although
functionality is then obviously somewhat limited.
Linux has also been ported to itself. You can now run the kernel as a
userspace application - this is called UserMode Linux (UML).
DOCUMENTATION:
- There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation
subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the
system: there are much better sources available.
- There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some
drivers for example. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what
is contained in each file. Please read the Changes file, as it
contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
your kernel.
- The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for
kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a
number of formats: PostScript (.ps), PDF, HTML, & man-pages, among others.
After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", "make htmldocs",
or "make mandocs" will render the documentation in the requested format.
INSTALLING the kernel source:
- If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and
unpack it:
gzip -cd linux-3.X.tar.gz | tar xvf -
or
bzip2 -dc linux-3.X.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
Replace "XX" with the version number of the latest kernel.
Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
- You can also upgrade between 3.x releases by patching. Patches are
distributed in the traditional gzip and the newer bzip2 format. To
install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the
top level directory of the kernel source (linux-3.x) and execute:
gzip -cd ../patch-3.x.gz | patch -p1
or
bzip2 -dc ../patch-3.x.bz2 | patch -p1
(repeat xx for all versions bigger than the version of your current
source tree, _in_order_) and you should be ok. You may want to remove
the backup files (xxx~ or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no
failed patches (xxx# or xxx.rej). If there are, either you or me has
made a mistake.
Unlike patches for the 3.x kernels, patches for the 3.x.y kernels
(also known as the -stable kernels) are not incremental but instead apply
directly to the base 3.x kernel. Please read
Documentation/applying-patches.txt for more information.
Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any
patches found.
linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux
The first argument in the command above is the location of the
kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
- If you are upgrading between releases using the stable series patches
(for example, patch-3.x.y), note that these "dot-releases" are
not incremental and must be applied to the 3.x base tree. For
example, if your base kernel is 3.0 and you want to apply the
3.0.3 patch, you do not and indeed must not first apply the
3.0.1 and 3.0.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel
version 3.0.2 and want to jump to 3.0.3, you must first
reverse the 3.0.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying
the 3.0.3 patch.
You can read more on this in Documentation/applying-patches.txt
- Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
cd linux
make mrproper
You should now have the sources correctly installed.
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Compiling and running the 3.x kernels requires up-to-date
versions of various software packages. Consult
Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required
and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using
excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
build or operation.
BUILD directory for the kernel:
When compiling the kernel all output files will per default be
stored together with the kernel source code.
Using the option "make O=output/dir" allow you to specify an alternate
place for the output files (including .config).
Example:
kernel source code: /usr/src/linux-3.N
build directory: /home/name/build/kernel
To configure and build the kernel use:
cd /usr/src/linux-3.N
make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig
make O=/home/name/build/kernel
sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install
Please note: If the 'O=output/dir' option is used then it must be
used for all invocations of make.
CONFIGURING the kernel:
Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
version. New configuration options are added in each release, and
odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will
only ask you for the answers to new questions.
- Alternate configuration commands are:
"make config" Plain text interface.
"make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
"make nconfig" Enhanced text based color menus.
"make xconfig" X windows (Qt) based configuration tool.
"make gconfig" X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool.
"make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of
your existing ./.config file and asking about
new config symbols.
"make silentoldconfig"
Like above, but avoids cluttering the screen
with questions already answered.
Additionally updates the dependencies.
"make defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from either arch/$ARCH/defconfig
or arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig,
depending on the architecture.
"make ${PLATFORM}_defconfig"
Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from
arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig.
Use "make help" to get a list of all available
platforms of your architecture.
"make allyesconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'y' as much as possible.
"make allmodconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'm' as much as possible.
"make allnoconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'n' as much as possible.
"make randconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to random values.
You can find more information on using the Linux kernel config tools
in Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.txt.
NOTES on "make config":
- having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers
- compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386
will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386. The
kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up.
- A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger,
but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
have a math coprocessor or not.
- the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you
should probably answer 'n' to the questions for
"development", "experimental", or "debugging" features.
COMPILING the kernel:
- Make sure you have at least gcc 3.2 available.
For more information, refer to Documentation/Changes.
Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel.
- Do a "make" to create a compressed kernel image. It is also
possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the
kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.
To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal
build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.
- If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you
will also have to do "make modules_install".
- Verbose kernel compile/build output:
Normally the kernel build system runs in a fairly quiet mode (but not
totally silent). However, sometimes you or other kernel developers need
to see compile, link, or other commands exactly as they are executed.
For this, use "verbose" build mode. This is done by inserting
"V=1" in the "make" command. E.g.:
make V=1 all
To have the build system also tell the reason for the rebuild of each
target, use "V=2". The default is "V=0".
- Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is
especially true for the development releases, since each new release
contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a
backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you
are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
do a "make modules_install".
Alternatively, before compiling, use the kernel config option
"LOCALVERSION" to append a unique suffix to the regular kernel version.
LOCALVERSION can be set in the "General Setup" menu.
- In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
image (e.g. .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation)
to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found.
- Booting a kernel directly from a floppy without the assistance of a
bootloader such as LILO, is no longer supported.
If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which
uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf. The
kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
/boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image
and copy the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO
to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot
the new kernel image.
Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo.
You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your
old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not
work. See the LILO docs for more information.
After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system,
reboot, and enjoy!
If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode,
ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or
alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to
recompile the kernel to change these parameters.
- Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy.
IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:
- If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check
the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated
with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there
isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail
them to me (torvalds@linux-foundation.org), and possibly to any other
relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup.
- In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.
- If the bug results in a message like
unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
Oops: 0002
EIP: 0010:XXXXXXXX
eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx
esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx
ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx
Pid: xx, process nr: xx
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look
incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also
important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information
on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
- If you compiled the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS you can send the dump
as is, otherwise you will have to use the "ksymoops" program to make
sense of the dump (but compiling with CONFIG_KALLSYMS is usually preferred).
This utility can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops/ .
Alternately you can do the dump lookup by hand:
- In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can
look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help
me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
see which kernel function contains the offending address.
To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. This is
the file 'linux/vmlinux'. To extract the namelist and match it against
the EIP from the kernel crash, do:
nm vmlinux | sort | less
This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel
debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
"context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
interesting one.
If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
possible will help. Please read the REPORTING-BUGS document for details.
- Alternately, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you
cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the
kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make
clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config").
After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore".
You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the
point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes
with the EIP value.)
gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly)
disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.