linux/Documentation/sysctl
Oleg Nesterov b03023ecbd coredump: add %i/%I in core_pattern to report the tid of the crashed thread
format_corename() can only pass the leader's pid to the core handler,
but there is no simple way to figure out which thread originated the
coredump.

As Jan explains, this also means that there is no simple way to create
the backtrace of the crashed process:

As programs are mostly compiled with implicit gcc -fomit-frame-pointer
one needs program's .eh_frame section (equivalently PT_GNU_EH_FRAME
segment) or .debug_frame section.  .debug_frame usually is present only
in separate debug info files usually not even installed on the system.
While .eh_frame is a part of the executable/library (and it is even
always mapped for C++ exceptions unwinding) it no longer has to be
present anywhere on the disk as the program could be upgraded in the
meantime and the running instance has its executable file already
unlinked from disk.

One possibility is to echo 0x3f >/proc/*/coredump_filter and dump all
the file-backed memory including the executable's .eh_frame section.
But that can create huge core files, for example even due to mmapped
data files.

Other possibility would be to read .eh_frame from /proc/PID/mem at the
core_pattern handler time of the core dump.  For the backtrace one needs
to read the register state first which can be done from core_pattern
handler:

    ptrace(PTRACE_SEIZE, tid, 0, PTRACE_O_TRACEEXIT)
    close(0);    // close pipe fd to resume the sleeping dumper
    waitpid();   // should report EXIT
    PTRACE_GETREGS or other requests

The remaining problem is how to get the 'tid' value of the crashed
thread.  It could be read from the first NT_PRSTATUS note of the core
file but that makes the core_pattern handler complicated.

Unfortunately %t is already used so this patch uses %i/%I.

Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (https://github.com/abrt/abrt/wiki/overview)
is experimenting with this.  It is using the elfutils
(https://fedorahosted.org/elfutils/) unwinder for generating the
backtraces.  Apart from not needing matching executables as mentioned
above, another advantage is that we can get the backtrace without saving
the core (which might be quite large) to disk.

[mmilata@redhat.com: final paragraph of changelog]
Signed-off-by: Jan Kratochvil <jan.kratochvil@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: Jan Kratochvil <jan.kratochvil@redhat.com>
Cc: Mark Wielaard <mjw@redhat.com>
Cc: Martin Milata <mmilata@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-10-14 02:18:21 +02:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
abi.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
fs.txt Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2012-08-01 10:26:23 -07:00
kernel.txt coredump: add %i/%I in core_pattern to report the tid of the crashed thread 2014-10-14 02:18:21 +02:00
net.txt tipc: add name distributor resiliency queue 2014-09-01 17:51:48 -07:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
sunrpc.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
vm.txt mm, pcp: allow restoring percpu_pagelist_fraction default 2014-06-23 16:47:43 -07:00

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)