RE: [PATCH 1/2 v6] kdump: add the vmcoreinfo documentation

[Kazuhito Hagio]

On 1/11/2019 7:33 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 08:19:43PM +0800, Lianbo Jiang wrote:
>> +init_uts_ns.name.release
>> +------------------------
>> +
>> +The version of the Linux kernel. Used to find the corresponding source
>> +code from which the kernel has been built.
>> +
> 
> ...
> 
>> +
>> +init_uts_ns
>> +-----------
>> +
>> +This is the UTS namespace, which is used to isolate two specific
>> +elements of the system that relate to the uname(2) system call. The UTS
>> +namespace is named after the data structure used to store information
>> +returned by the uname(2) system call.
>> +
>> +User-space tools can get the kernel name, host name, kernel release
>> +number, kernel version, architecture name and OS type from it.
> 
> Already asked this but no reply so lemme paste my question again:
> 
> "And this document already fulfills its purpose - those two vmcoreinfo
> exports are redundant and the first one can be removed.
> 
> And now that we agreed that VMCOREINFO is not an ABI and is very tightly
> coupled to the kernel version, init_uts_ns.name.release can be removed,
> yes?
> 
> Or is there anything speaking against that?"

As for makedumpfile, it will be not impossible to remove the
init_uts_ns.name.relase (OSRELEASE), but some fixes are needed.
Because historically OSRELEASE has been a kind of a mandatory entry
in vmcoreinfo from the beginning of vmcoreinfo, so makedumpfile uses
its existence to check whether a vmcoreinfo is sane.

Also, I think crash also will need to be fixed if it is removed.
So I hope it will be left as it is.

Thanks,
Kazu