On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> CGD repeatedly points out another major reason for kmem groveling --
> so your tools can work on kernel core dumps.
> 
> I prefer file systems aesthetically, but CGD's argument is a bit of a
> showstopper.

It's not a showstopper. We could change /proc so that we can hand
it (as mount options) a kernel file and a core file, and then we
can mount another proc filesystem (somewhere other than /proc, of
course) that would give us the appropriate information for that
kernel and dump. The -N option on the tools would be changed to
have them look at a specified filesystem.

Somewhat less clean from the code duplication point of view (since
it means we have to duplicate the /proc code in the kernel outside
it as well), but more clean from the permissions point of view
(since one would not have to become root to mount the filesystem)
would be to have a program that generates a static tree of files
containing a snapshot of the proc filesystem from a given kernel
file and core dump. But then again, who's doing kernel debugging
on a machine on which they don't have root access?

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
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