Re: [RFC 0/1] Add sysctl entry for controlling crash_kexec_post_notifiers

From: Alejandro Jimenez
Date: Mon Apr 04 2022 - 17:41:16 EST


Hi Guilherme,

On 4/2/2022 10:01 AM, Guilherme G. Piccoli wrote:
On 01/04/2022 17:22, Alejandro Jimenez wrote:
I noticed that in contrast to other kernel core parameters (e.g. kernel.panic,
kernel.panic_on_warn, kernel.panic_print) crash_kexec_post_notifiers is not
available as a sysctl tunable. I am aware that because it is a kernel core
parameter, there is already an entry under:

/sys/module/kernel/parameters/crash_kexec_post_notifiers

and that allows us to read/modify it at runtime. However, I thought it should
also be available via sysctl, since users that want to read/set this value at
runtime might look there first.

I believe there is an ongoing effort to clean up kernel/sysctl.c, but it wasn't
clear to me if this entry (and perhaps the other panic related entries too)
should be placed on kernel/panic.c. I wanted to verify first that this change
would be welcomed before doing additional refactoring work.

I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.

Thank you,
Alejandro
Hi Alejandro, thanks for you patch. I have a "selfish" concern though,
I'll expose it here.

I'm working a panic refactor, in order to split the panic notifiers in
more lists - good summary of this discussion at [0].
I'm in the half of the patches, hopefully next 2 weeks I have something
ready to submit (I'll be out next week).

As part of this effort, I plan to have a more fine-grained control of
this parameter, and it's going to be a sysctl, but not
"crash_kexec_post_notifiers" - this one should be kept I guess due to
retro-compatibility, but it'd be a layer on top oh the new one.
It would be great to provide finer control and isolate the riskier modifiers.

I am using crash_kexec_post_notifiers to control behavior of pvpanic and pstore and there is not an urgent need for my change, so I don't mind waiting for the new interface to evolve. Please copy me if possible on future submissions.

Thank you,
Alejandro

With that said, unless you have urgent needs for this patch to be
reviewed/merged , I'd like to ask you to wait the series and I can loop
you there, so you may review/comment and see if it fits your use case.

Thanks,


Guilherme


[0] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YfPxvzSzDLjO5ldp@alley/