lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1999]   [Jul]   [2]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
SubjectRe: The stability crisis
Date
From
Pavel Machek wrote:
> No. Dumping to on-disk partition is _very_ risky, because it is easy
> to miss the right partition. Floppy is much safer because it is much
> harder to hit harddisk this way.

In theory, when a system is "oopsing", it is unsafe to do anything.

In practise, I agree with you that writing to a harddisk is more
dangerous than writing to a floppy.

On the other hand, having a system control (ioctl on a file?, sysctl?,
/proc?) that tells the system: "Please use that for crash dumps", and
requires the file to be appropriately sized and preallocated would, in
my opinion, be safe enough. Once the system thinks: "this is going the
wrong way", it should write out the messages buffer to the
pre-determined blocks.

If those pre-determined block numbers are wrong (random pointer), then
it is most likely that lots of other stuff was broken first, so that
writing to disk is no longer possible.

Roger.

--
** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 **
*-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --*
------ Microsoft SELLS you Windows, Linux GIVES you the whole house ------


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:52    [W:1.542 / U:0.132 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site