Commit 70e74a5997 ("pstore: Run after modules are loaded") added After=
and Wants= entries for all known kernel modules providing a pstore.
While adding these dependencies on systems where one of the modules is
not present, or not configured, should not have a real affect on the
system, it can produce annoying error messages in the kernel log. E.g.
"mtd device must be supplied (device name is empty)" when the mtdpstore
module is not configured correctly.
Since dependencies cannot be removed with drop-ins, if a distro wants to
remove some of these modules from systemd-pstore.service, they need to
patch units/systemd-pstore.service.in. On the other hand, if they want
to append to the dependencies this can be done by shipping a drop-in.
Since the original intent of the previous commit was to fix [1], which
only requires the efi_pstore module, remove all other kernel module
dependencies from systemd-pstore.service, and let distros ship drop-ins
to add dependencies if needed.
[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/18540
The systemd-pstore service takes pstore files on boot and transfers them
to disk. It only does it once on boot and only if it finds any. The typical
location of the pstore on modern systems is the UEFI variable store.
Most distributions ship with CONFIG_EFI_VARS_PSTORE=m. That means, the
UEFI variable store is only available on boot after the respective module
is loaded.
In most situations, the pstore service gets loaded before the UEFI pstore,
so we don't get to transfer logs. Instead, they accumulate, filling up the
pstore over time, potentially breaking the UEFI variable store.
Let's add a service dependency on any kernel module that can provide a
pstore to ensure we only scan for pstate after we can actually see pstate.
I have seen live occurences of systems breaking because we did not erase
the pstates and ran out of UEFI nvram space.
Fixes https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/18540
We don't need two (and half) templating systems anymore, yay!
I'm keeping the changes minimal, to make the diff manageable. Some enhancements
due to a better templating system might be possible in the future.
For handling of '## ' — see the next commit.
This dependency is now generated automatically given we use
StateDirectory=. Moreover the combination of Wants= and After= was too
strong anway, as whether remount-fs is pulled in or not should not be up
to systemd-pstore.service, and in fact is part of the initial
transaction anyway.
sysinit.target is the target our early boot services are generally
pulled in from, make systemd-pstore.service not an exception of that.
Effectively this doesn't mean much, either way our unit is part of the
initial transaction.
This patch introduces the systemd pstore service which will archive the
contents of the Linux persistent storage filesystem, pstore, to other storage,
thus preserving the existing information contained in the pstore, and clearing
pstore storage for future error events.
Linux provides a persistent storage file system, pstore[1], that can store
error records when the kernel dies (or reboots or powers-off). These records in
turn can be referenced to debug kernel problems (currently the kernel stuffs
the tail of the dmesg, which also contains a stack backtrace, into pstore).
The pstore file system supports a variety of backends that map onto persistent
storage, such as the ACPI ERST[2, Section 18.5 Error Serialization] and UEFI
variables[3 Appendix N Common Platform Error Record]. The pstore backends
typically offer a relatively small amount of persistent storage, e.g. 64KiB,
which can quickly fill up and thus prevent subsequent kernel crashes from
recording errors. Thus there is a need to monitor and extract the pstore
contents so that future kernel problems can also record information in the
pstore.
The pstore service is independent of the kdump service. In cloud environments
specifically, host and guest filesystems are on remote filesystems (eg. iSCSI
or NFS), thus kdump relies [implicitly and/or explicitly] upon proper operation
of networking software *and* hardware *and* infrastructure. Thus it may not be
possible to capture a kernel coredump to a file since writes over the network
may not be possible.
The pstore backend, on the other hand, is completely local and provides a path
to store error records which will survive a reboot and aid in post-mortem
debugging.
Usage Notes:
This tool moves files from /sys/fs/pstore into /var/lib/systemd/pstore.
To enable kernel recording of error records into pstore, one must either pass
crash_kexec_post_notifiers[4] to the kernel command line or enable via 'echo Y
> /sys/module/kernel/parameters/crash_kexec_post_notifiers'. This option
invokes the recording of errors into pstore *before* an attempt to kexec/kdump
on a kernel crash.
Optionally, to record reboots and shutdowns in the pstore, one can either pass
the printk.always_kmsg_dump[4] to the kernel command line or enable via 'echo Y >
/sys/module/printk/parameters/always_kmsg_dump'. This option enables code on the
shutdown path to record information via pstore.
This pstore service is a oneshot service. When run, the service invokes
systemd-pstore which is a tool that performs the following:
- reads the pstore.conf configuration file
- collects the lists of files in the pstore (eg. /sys/fs/pstore)
- for certain file types (eg. dmesg) a handler is invoked
- for all other files, the file is moved from pstore
- In the case of dmesg handler, final processing occurs as such:
- files processed in reverse lexigraphical order to faciliate
reconstruction of original dmesg
- the filename is examined to determine which dmesg it is a part
- the file is appended to the reconstructed dmesg
For example, the following pstore contents:
root@vm356:~# ls -al /sys/fs/pstore
total 0
drwxr-x--- 2 root root 0 May 9 09:50 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 0 May 9 09:50 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1610 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337601001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1778 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337602001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1726 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337603001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1746 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337604001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1686 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337605001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1690 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337606001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1775 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337607001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1811 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337608001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1817 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337609001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1795 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337710001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1770 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337711001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1796 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337712001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1787 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337713001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1808 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337714001
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1754 May 9 09:49 dmesg-efi-155741337715001
results in the following:
root@vm356:~# ls -al /var/lib/systemd/pstore/155741337/
total 92
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 9 09:50 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 40 May 9 09:50 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1610 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337601001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1778 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337602001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1726 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337603001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1746 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337604001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1686 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337605001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1690 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337606001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1775 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337607001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1811 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337608001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1817 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337609001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1795 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337710001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1770 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337711001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1796 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337712001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1787 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337713001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1808 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337714001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1754 May 9 09:50 dmesg-efi-155741337715001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26754 May 9 09:50 dmesg.txt
where dmesg.txt is reconstructed from the group of related
dmesg-efi-155741337* files.
Configuration file:
The pstore.conf configuration file has four settings, described below.
- Storage : one of "none", "external", or "journal". With "none", this
tool leaves the contents of pstore untouched. With "external", the
contents of the pstore are moved into the /var/lib/systemd/pstore,
as well as logged into the journal. With "journal", the contents of
the pstore are recorded only in the systemd journal. The default is
"external".
- Unlink : is a boolean. When "true", the default, then files in the
pstore are removed once processed. When "false", processing of the
pstore occurs normally, but the pstore files remain.
References:
[1] "Persistent storage for a kernel's dying breath",
March 23, 2011.
https://lwn.net/Articles/434821/
[2] "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface Specification",
version 6.2, May 2017.
https://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/ACPI_6_2.pdf
[3] "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Specification",
version 2.8, March 2019.
https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_8_final.pdf
[4] "The kernel’s command-line parameters",
https://static.lwn.net/kerneldoc/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html
