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50 lines
2.5 KiB
50 lines
2.5 KiB
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The s390 SCSI dump tool (zfcpdump) |
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System z machines (z900 or higher) provide hardware support for creating system |
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dumps on SCSI disks. The dump process is initiated by booting a dump tool, which |
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has to create a dump of the current (probably crashed) Linux image. In order to |
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not overwrite memory of the crashed Linux with data of the dump tool, the |
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hardware saves some memory plus the register sets of the boot CPU before the |
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dump tool is loaded. There exists an SCLP hardware interface to obtain the saved |
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memory afterwards. Currently 32 MB are saved. |
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This zfcpdump implementation consists of a Linux dump kernel together with |
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a user space dump tool, which are loaded together into the saved memory region |
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below 32 MB. zfcpdump is installed on a SCSI disk using zipl (as contained in |
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the s390-tools package) to make the device bootable. The operator of a Linux |
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system can then trigger a SCSI dump by booting the SCSI disk, where zfcpdump |
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resides on. |
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The user space dump tool accesses the memory of the crashed system by means |
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of the /proc/vmcore interface. This interface exports the crashed system's |
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memory and registers in ELF core dump format. To access the memory which has |
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been saved by the hardware SCLP requests will be created at the time the data |
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is needed by /proc/vmcore. The tail part of the crashed systems memory which |
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has not been stashed by hardware can just be copied from real memory. |
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To build a dump enabled kernel the kernel config option CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP |
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has to be set. |
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To get a valid zfcpdump kernel configuration use "make zfcpdump_defconfig". |
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The s390 zipl tool looks for the zfcpdump kernel and optional initrd/initramfs |
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under the following locations: |
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* kernel: <zfcpdump directory>/zfcpdump.image |
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* ramdisk: <zfcpdump directory>/zfcpdump.rd |
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The zfcpdump directory is defined in the s390-tools package. |
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The user space application of zfcpdump can reside in an intitramfs or an |
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initrd. It can also be included in a built-in kernel initramfs. The application |
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reads from /proc/vmcore or zcore/mem and writes the system dump to a SCSI disk. |
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The s390-tools package version 1.24.0 and above builds an external zfcpdump |
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initramfs with a user space application that writes the dump to a SCSI |
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partition. |
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For more information on how to use zfcpdump refer to the s390 'Using the Dump |
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Tools' book, which is available from IBM Knowledge Center: |
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https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liaaf/lnz_r_dt.html
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