From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964926AbWDMNzx (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:55:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S964939AbWDMNzx (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:55:53 -0400 Received: from ms-smtp-01.nyroc.rr.com ([24.24.2.55]:50907 "EHLO ms-smtp-01.nyroc.rr.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964926AbWDMNzv (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:55:51 -0400 Subject: Direct writing to the IDE on panic? From: Steven Rostedt To: LKML Content-Type: text/plain Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:55:47 -0400 Message-Id: <1144936547.1336.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.4.2.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi, I was wondering if anyone has done some work to directly write and poll to the IDE? This is to store data on a panic or oops. So it would need to bypass pretty much all the normal Linux mechanisms to do low lever IDE work. So lets say we have a special partition on a hard drive to be reserved for just this purpose. Even set it up to be a swap partition. So on a system crash, turn off interrupts, stop all other processors, and then through polling (to avoid interrupt handling), write as much data as possible about the state of the machine to this special partition. After a reboot, this data can then be retrieved for review to see why the system crashed. Obviously, this would be a slow process, but the system has crashed and we care more about retrieving information than speed. Has this already been done and what issues need to be addressed? Thanks, -- Steve