Re: savecore can't dump

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 03:57:04PM +0100, Patrick Welche wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 08:06:36AM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:43:32PM +0100, Patrick Welche wrote:
> > >
> > > The following patch "works for me" - suggestions on improvements, and 
> > > which
> > > man page I should edit welcome :-)
> > 
> > The patch is wrong.  Symbols should be retrieved from /dev/ksyms and
> > all knowledge of "the booted kernel name" removed.
> 
> Just one question: savecore tries to copy the currently running kernel -
> presumably it needs the getbootfile() for that?

/dev/ksyms will work fine for that as well, since all the "currently running
kernel" is used for is its symbol table.

There is no need for any of these tools to know anything about the currently
running kernel.  They will behave no worse in its absence -- though, as yamt
has pointed out, in the long run it would be best to enhance what's written
to the dump area so that the dumped kernel text or at least the symbol table
is included in it.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon                                        
tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost
    "Even experienced UNIX users occasionally enter rm *.* at the UNIX
     prompt only to realize too late that they have removed the wrong
     segment of the directory structure." - Microsoft WSS whitepaper