| Ramoops oops/panic logger |
| ========================= |
| |
| Sergiu Iordache <sergiu@chromium.org> |
| |
| Updated: 10 Feb 2021 |
| |
| Introduction |
| ------------ |
| |
| Ramoops is an oops/panic logger that writes its logs to RAM before the system |
| crashes. It works by logging oopses and panics in a circular buffer. Ramoops |
| needs a system with persistent RAM so that the content of that area can |
| survive after a restart. |
| |
| Ramoops concepts |
| ---------------- |
| |
| Ramoops uses a predefined memory area to store the dump. The start and size |
| and type of the memory area are set using three variables: |
| |
| * ``mem_address`` for the start |
| * ``mem_size`` for the size. The memory size will be rounded down to a |
| power of two. |
| * ``mem_type`` to specify if the memory type (default is pgprot_writecombine). |
| * ``mem_name`` to specify a memory region defined by ``reserve_mem`` command |
| line parameter. |
| |
| Typically the default value of ``mem_type=0`` should be used as that sets the pstore |
| mapping to pgprot_writecombine. Setting ``mem_type=1`` attempts to use |
| ``pgprot_noncached``, which only works on some platforms. This is because pstore |
| depends on atomic operations. At least on ARM, pgprot_noncached causes the |
| memory to be mapped strongly ordered, and atomic operations on strongly ordered |
| memory are implementation defined, and won't work on many ARMs such as omaps. |
| Setting ``mem_type=2`` attempts to treat the memory region as normal memory, |
| which enables full cache on it. This can improve the performance. |
| |
| The memory area is divided into ``record_size`` chunks (also rounded down to |
| power of two) and each kmesg dump writes a ``record_size`` chunk of |
| information. |
| |
| Limiting which kinds of kmsg dumps are stored can be controlled via |
| the ``max_reason`` value, as defined in include/linux/kmsg_dump.h's |
| ``enum kmsg_dump_reason``. For example, to store both Oopses and Panics, |
| ``max_reason`` should be set to 2 (KMSG_DUMP_OOPS), to store only Panics |
| ``max_reason`` should be set to 1 (KMSG_DUMP_PANIC). Setting this to 0 |
| (KMSG_DUMP_UNDEF), means the reason filtering will be controlled by the |
| ``printk.always_kmsg_dump`` boot param: if unset, it'll be KMSG_DUMP_OOPS, |
| otherwise KMSG_DUMP_MAX. |
| |
| The module uses a counter to record multiple dumps but the counter gets reset |
| on restart (i.e. new dumps after the restart will overwrite old ones). |
| |
| Ramoops also supports software ECC protection of persistent memory regions. |
| This might be useful when a hardware reset was used to bring the machine back |
| to life (i.e. a watchdog triggered). In such cases, RAM may be somewhat |
| corrupt, but usually it is restorable. |
| |
| Setting the parameters |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| Setting the ramoops parameters can be done in several different manners: |
| |
| A. Use the module parameters (which have the names of the variables described |
| as before). For quick debugging, you can also reserve parts of memory during |
| boot and then use the reserved memory for ramoops. For example, assuming a |
| machine with > 128 MB of memory, the following kernel command line will tell |
| the kernel to use only the first 128 MB of memory, and place ECC-protected |
| ramoops region at 128 MB boundary:: |
| |
| mem=128M ramoops.mem_address=0x8000000 ramoops.ecc=1 |
| |
| B. Use Device Tree bindings, as described in |
| ``Documentation/devicetree/bindings/reserved-memory/ramoops.yaml``. |
| For example:: |
| |
| reserved-memory { |
| #address-cells = <2>; |
| #size-cells = <2>; |
| ranges; |
| |
| ramoops@8f000000 { |
| compatible = "ramoops"; |
| reg = <0 0x8f000000 0 0x100000>; |
| record-size = <0x4000>; |
| console-size = <0x4000>; |
| }; |
| }; |
| |
| C. Use a platform device and set the platform data. The parameters can then |
| be set through that platform data. An example of doing that is: |
| |
| .. code-block:: c |
| |
| #include <linux/pstore_ram.h> |
| [...] |
| |
| static struct ramoops_platform_data ramoops_data = { |
| .mem_size = <...>, |
| .mem_address = <...>, |
| .mem_type = <...>, |
| .record_size = <...>, |
| .max_reason = <...>, |
| .ecc = <...>, |
| }; |
| |
| static struct platform_device ramoops_dev = { |
| .name = "ramoops", |
| .dev = { |
| .platform_data = &ramoops_data, |
| }, |
| }; |
| |
| [... inside a function ...] |
| int ret; |
| |
| ret = platform_device_register(&ramoops_dev); |
| if (ret) { |
| printk(KERN_ERR "unable to register platform device\n"); |
| return ret; |
| } |
| |
| D. Using a region of memory reserved via ``reserve_mem`` command line |
| parameter. The address and size will be defined by the ``reserve_mem`` |
| parameter. Note, that ``reserve_mem`` may not always allocate memory |
| in the same location, and cannot be relied upon. Testing will need |
| to be done, and it may not work on every machine, nor every kernel. |
| Consider this a "best effort" approach. The ``reserve_mem`` option |
| takes a size, alignment and name as arguments. The name is used |
| to map the memory to a label that can be retrieved by ramoops. |
| |
| reserve_mem=2M:4096:oops ramoops.mem_name=oops |
| |
| You can specify either RAM memory or peripheral devices' memory. However, when |
| specifying RAM, be sure to reserve the memory by issuing memblock_reserve() |
| very early in the architecture code, e.g.:: |
| |
| #include <linux/memblock.h> |
| |
| memblock_reserve(ramoops_data.mem_address, ramoops_data.mem_size); |
| |
| Dump format |
| ----------- |
| |
| The data dump begins with a header, currently defined as ``====`` followed by a |
| timestamp and a new line. The dump then continues with the actual data. |
| |
| Reading the data |
| ---------------- |
| |
| The dump data can be read from the pstore filesystem. The format for these |
| files is ``dmesg-ramoops-N``, where N is the record number in memory. To delete |
| a stored record from RAM, simply unlink the respective pstore file. |
| |
| Persistent function tracing |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| Persistent function tracing might be useful for debugging software or hardware |
| related hangs. The functions call chain log is stored in a ``ftrace-ramoops`` |
| file. Here is an example of usage:: |
| |
| # mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug/ |
| # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/pstore/record_ftrace |
| # reboot -f |
| [...] |
| # mount -t pstore pstore /mnt/ |
| # tail /mnt/ftrace-ramoops |
| 0 ffffffff8101ea64 ffffffff8101bcda native_apic_mem_read <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x6a/0xc0 |
| 0 ffffffff8101ea44 ffffffff8101bcf6 native_apic_mem_write <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x86/0xc0 |
| 0 ffffffff81020084 ffffffff8101a4b5 hpet_disable <- native_machine_shutdown+0x75/0x90 |
| 0 ffffffff81005f94 ffffffff8101a4bb iommu_shutdown_noop <- native_machine_shutdown+0x7b/0x90 |
| 0 ffffffff8101a6a1 ffffffff8101a437 native_machine_emergency_restart <- native_machine_restart+0x37/0x40 |
| 0 ffffffff811f9876 ffffffff8101a73a acpi_reboot <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xaa/0x1e0 |
| 0 ffffffff8101a514 ffffffff8101a772 mach_reboot_fixups <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xe2/0x1e0 |
| 0 ffffffff811d9c54 ffffffff8101a7a0 __const_udelay <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0x110/0x1e0 |
| 0 ffffffff811d9c34 ffffffff811d9c80 __delay <- __const_udelay+0x30/0x40 |
| 0 ffffffff811d9d14 ffffffff811d9c3f delay_tsc <- __delay+0xf/0x20 |