Go to file
Dave Young 9ca5c8e632 x86/kdump: Have crashkernel=X reserve under 4G by default
The kdump crashkernel low reservation is limited to under 896M even for
X86_64. This obscure and miserable limitation exists for compatibility
with old kexec-tools but the reason is not documented anywhere.

Some more tests/investigations about the background:

a) Previously, old kexec-tools could only load purgatory to memory under
   2G. Eric removed that limitation in 2012 in kexec-tools:

     b4f9f8599679 ("kexec x86_64: Make purgatory relocatable anywhere
		   in the 64bit address space.")

b) Back in 2013 Yinghai removed all the limitations in new kexec-tools,
   bzImage64 can be loaded anywhere:

     82c3dd2280d2 ("kexec, x86_64: Load bzImage64 above 4G")

c) Test results with old kexec-tools with old and latest kernels:

  1. Old kexec-tools can not build with modern toolchain anymore,
     I built it in a RHEL6 vm.

  2. 2.0.0 kexec-tools does not work with the latest kernel even with
     memory under 896M and gives an error:

     "ELF core (kcore) parse failed"

     For that it needs below kexec-tools fix:

       ed15ba1b9977 ("build_mem_phdrs(): check if p_paddr is invalid")

  3. Even with patched kexec-tools which fixes 2),  it still needs some
     other fixes to work correctly for KASLR-enabled kernels.

So the situation is:

* Old kexec-tools is already broken with latest kernels.

* We can not keep these limitations forever just for compatibility with very
  old kexec-tools.

* If one must use old tools then he/she can choose crashkernel=X@Y.

* People have reported bugs where crashkernel=384M failed because KASLR
  makes the 0-896M space sparse.

* Crashkernel can reserve in low or high area, it is natural to understand
  low as memory under 4G.

Hence drop the 896M limitation and change crashkernel low reservation to
reserve under 4G by default.

Signed-off-by: Dave Young <dyoung@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
Cc: Petr Tesarik <ptesarik@suse.cz>
Cc: piliu@redhat.com
Cc: Ram Pai <linuxram@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Sinan Kaya <okaya@codeaurora.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: vgoyal@redhat.com
Cc: x86-ml <x86@kernel.org>
Cc: Yinghai Lu <yinghai@kernel.org>
Cc: Zhimin Gu <kookoo.gu@intel.com>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190421035058.943630505@redhat.com
2019-04-22 10:15:16 +02:00
Documentation Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dtor/input 2019-04-19 10:28:27 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add GCC runtime library exception text 2019-01-16 14:54:15 -07:00
arch x86/kdump: Have crashkernel=X reserve under 4G by default 2019-04-22 10:15:16 +02:00
block bfq: update internal depth state when queue depth changes 2019-04-13 19:08:22 -06:00
certs kexec, KEYS: Make use of platform keyring for signature verify 2019-02-04 17:34:07 -05:00
crypto crypto: x86/poly1305 - fix overflow during partial reduction 2019-04-08 14:43:06 +08:00
drivers SCSI fixes on 20190420 2019-04-20 12:52:23 -07:00
fs for-linus-20190420 2019-04-20 12:20:58 -07:00
include for-linus-20190420 2019-04-20 12:20:58 -07:00
init init: initialize jump labels before command line option parsing 2019-04-19 09:46:05 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.mount' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-03-12 14:08:19 -07:00
kernel Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-04-20 10:10:49 -07:00
lib kcov: improve CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_KCOV help text 2019-04-19 09:46:05 -07:00
mm Merge branch 'for-5.1-fixes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dennis/percpu 2019-04-19 15:37:22 -07:00
net NFS client bugfixes for Linux 5.1 2019-04-20 12:55:23 -07:00
samples Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-03-11 08:54:01 -07:00
scripts locking/atomics: Don't assume that scripts are executable 2019-04-19 14:21:43 +02:00
security Merge branch 'for-5.1-fixes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/cgroup 2019-04-19 18:03:55 -07:00
sound ALSA: hda/realtek - add two more pin configuration sets to quirk table 2019-04-17 10:41:38 +02:00
tools Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-04-20 10:05:02 -07:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt KVM: fix spectrev1 gadgets 2019-04-16 15:38:07 +02:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2019-04-12 12:49:54 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore kbuild: Add support for DT binding schema checks 2018-12-13 09:41:32 -06:00
.mailmap Update Nicolas Pitre's email address 2019-04-02 18:12:44 -10:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS Char/Misc driver patches for 5.1-rc1 2019-03-06 14:18:59 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.1 2019-03-10 17:48:21 -07:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS - Fix the random PID check 2019-04-20 10:43:37 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.1-rc6 2019-04-21 10:45:57 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.