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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
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tree2536f4b2d7893ccd916b5abdf3c454ad6edc03c2 /Documentation/admin-guide/ramoops.rst
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Merge tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-tracegrafted
Pull tracing fixes from Steven Rostedt: - Fix error output of boot instance creation failure Currently if a boot instance creation fails, instead of printing out the name of the instance that failed, it prints "(null)". That is because it prints "cur_str" that had already been processed by strsep(). Print the saved name instead. While at it, print the error code of the failure. - Fix use-after-free for same named historgrams Histograms can be named so that they can be used in multiple events. But if the named histogram has a variable attached, the second event that uses the named histogram which duplicates it and needs to free the original after duplication leaves the old variable in place and still visible. If another histogram uses than variable, it will use the stale one which will try to reference the freed duplicate histogram and crash the kernel. Free the duplicate variables along with the duplicated histogram data. - Check return value of kthread_run() in event self test The events self tests uses a kthread for testing but does not check if it succeeded in creating a kthread. If the kthread creation were to fail, the code will still try to call kthread_stop() on the error returned. - Fix race between reading trace_pipe and updating subbuffer size If a user is reading the trace_pipe file at the same time they update the ring buffer sub-buffer size, can cause the trace_pipe read to read stale data. Add trace_access_lock() around updating the ring buffer sub-buffer size. - Fix eventfs_inode on failure path in creation of the events directory In the creation of the "events" directory, if after allocating the eventfs_inode a failure is detected, it calls cleanup_ei() which calls free_ei(). The free_ei() will test if eventfs_inode being freed has no children. It is a bug if it does. But on the failure case of the creation of the "events" directory, the children lists have not yet been initialized and the free will trigger a warning because list_empty() on an uninitialized list returns false. Move the initialization into init_ei() where it makes more sense and makes sure that a created eventfs_inode has its lists initialized upon creation. - Check return value of kthread_run() in ftrace direct sample code The sample code that shows how to use the ftrace direct calls does not test the return of kthread_run() to see if it succeeds. Return a failure if the kthread_run() doesn't succeed. - Clear user events state on fork in case of alloc failure On fork, the child gets a pointer to the parent's user events state. It makes a copy of it then updates the child's pointer to it. But if the allocation fails, the duplication function leaves the child with a pointer to its parent's descriptor. When the child cleans up its data, it will free the parent's descriptor while the parent is still using it. In the duplication function, set the child's user_event_mm to NULL before testing if the allocation succeeded, and when it exits it will not free the parent's descriptor. - Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap simple_ring_buffer_swap_reader_page() starts with retry set to 8 and post-decrements it only after a failed link replacement. On the final attempt, a successful replacement leaves retry at zero, while a failed replacement leaves it at -1. But the check for success expects the retry value to be non-zero and exits with an error on zero. This is the opposite result. Fix it. - Fail nicely when the remote swap_reader_page() returns an error Currently, if the swap_reader_page() of a remote buffer fails, it triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE() and continues normally. Instead, have it exit with an error and a pr_warn() print instead of a full WARNING. * tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace: ring-buffer: Stop remote reader update when page swap fails tracing: Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap tracing/user_events: Clear copied tracing state before fork duplication samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-multi-modify samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-modify eventfs: Initialize ei->children and ei->list in init_ei() tracing: Fix use-after-free in trace_pipe read on sub-buffer order change tracing: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop() tracing: Fix use-after-free with same-name named triggers tracing: Fix logged instance name on creation failure
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+Ramoops oops/panic logger
+=========================
+
+Sergiu Iordache <sergiu@chromium.org>
+
+Updated: 10 Feb 2021
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+Ramoops is an oops/panic logger that writes its logs to RAM before the system
+crashes. It works by logging oopses and panics in a circular buffer. Ramoops
+needs a system with persistent RAM so that the content of that area can
+survive after a restart.
+
+Ramoops concepts
+----------------
+
+Ramoops uses a predefined memory area to store the dump. The start and size
+and type of the memory area are set using three variables:
+
+ * ``mem_address`` for the start
+ * ``mem_size`` for the size. The memory size will be rounded down to a
+ power of two.
+ * ``mem_type`` to specify if the memory type (default is pgprot_writecombine).
+ * ``mem_name`` to specify a memory region defined by ``reserve_mem`` command
+ line parameter.
+
+Typically the default value of ``mem_type=0`` should be used as that sets the pstore
+mapping to pgprot_writecombine. Setting ``mem_type=1`` attempts to use
+``pgprot_noncached``, which only works on some platforms. This is because pstore
+depends on atomic operations. At least on ARM, pgprot_noncached causes the
+memory to be mapped strongly ordered, and atomic operations on strongly ordered
+memory are implementation defined, and won't work on many ARMs such as omaps.
+Setting ``mem_type=2`` attempts to treat the memory region as normal memory,
+which enables full cache on it. This can improve the performance.
+
+The memory area is divided into ``record_size`` chunks (also rounded down to
+power of two) and each kmesg dump writes a ``record_size`` chunk of
+information.
+
+Limiting which kinds of kmsg dumps are stored can be controlled via
+the ``max_reason`` value, as defined in include/linux/kmsg_dump.h's
+``enum kmsg_dump_reason``. For example, to store both Oopses and Panics,
+``max_reason`` should be set to 2 (KMSG_DUMP_OOPS), to store only Panics
+``max_reason`` should be set to 1 (KMSG_DUMP_PANIC). Setting this to 0
+(KMSG_DUMP_UNDEF), means the reason filtering will be controlled by the
+``printk.always_kmsg_dump`` boot param: if unset, it'll be KMSG_DUMP_OOPS,
+otherwise KMSG_DUMP_MAX.
+
+The module uses a counter to record multiple dumps but the counter gets reset
+on restart (i.e. new dumps after the restart will overwrite old ones).
+
+Ramoops also supports software ECC protection of persistent memory regions.
+This might be useful when a hardware reset was used to bring the machine back
+to life (i.e. a watchdog triggered). In such cases, RAM may be somewhat
+corrupt, but usually it is restorable.
+
+Setting the parameters
+----------------------
+
+Setting the ramoops parameters can be done in several different manners:
+
+ A. Use the module parameters (which have the names of the variables described
+ as before). For quick debugging, you can also reserve parts of memory during
+ boot and then use the reserved memory for ramoops. For example, assuming a
+ machine with > 128 MB of memory, the following kernel command line will tell
+ the kernel to use only the first 128 MB of memory, and place ECC-protected
+ ramoops region at 128 MB boundary::
+
+ mem=128M ramoops.mem_address=0x8000000 ramoops.ecc=1
+
+ B. Use Device Tree bindings, as described in
+ ``Documentation/devicetree/bindings/reserved-memory/ramoops.yaml``.
+ For example::
+
+ reserved-memory {
+ #address-cells = <2>;
+ #size-cells = <2>;
+ ranges;
+
+ ramoops@8f000000 {
+ compatible = "ramoops";
+ reg = <0 0x8f000000 0 0x100000>;
+ record-size = <0x4000>;
+ console-size = <0x4000>;
+ };
+ };
+
+ C. Use a platform device and set the platform data. The parameters can then
+ be set through that platform data. An example of doing that is:
+
+ .. code-block:: c
+
+ #include <linux/pstore_ram.h>
+ [...]
+
+ static struct ramoops_platform_data ramoops_data = {
+ .mem_size = <...>,
+ .mem_address = <...>,
+ .mem_type = <...>,
+ .record_size = <...>,
+ .max_reason = <...>,
+ .ecc = <...>,
+ };
+
+ static struct platform_device ramoops_dev = {
+ .name = "ramoops",
+ .dev = {
+ .platform_data = &ramoops_data,
+ },
+ };
+
+ [... inside a function ...]
+ int ret;
+
+ ret = platform_device_register(&ramoops_dev);
+ if (ret) {
+ printk(KERN_ERR "unable to register platform device\n");
+ return ret;
+ }
+
+ D. Using a region of memory reserved via ``reserve_mem`` command line
+ parameter. The address and size will be defined by the ``reserve_mem``
+ parameter. Note, that ``reserve_mem`` may not always allocate memory
+ in the same location, and cannot be relied upon. Testing will need
+ to be done, and it may not work on every machine, nor every kernel.
+ Consider this a "best effort" approach. The ``reserve_mem`` option
+ takes a size, alignment and name as arguments. The name is used
+ to map the memory to a label that can be retrieved by ramoops.
+
+ reserve_mem=2M:4096:oops ramoops.mem_name=oops
+
+You can specify either RAM memory or peripheral devices' memory. However, when
+specifying RAM, be sure to reserve the memory by issuing memblock_reserve()
+very early in the architecture code, e.g.::
+
+ #include <linux/memblock.h>
+
+ memblock_reserve(ramoops_data.mem_address, ramoops_data.mem_size);
+
+Dump format
+-----------
+
+The data dump begins with a header, currently defined as ``====`` followed by a
+timestamp and a new line. The dump then continues with the actual data.
+
+Reading the data
+----------------
+
+The dump data can be read from the pstore filesystem. The format for these
+files is ``dmesg-ramoops-N``, where N is the record number in memory. To delete
+a stored record from RAM, simply unlink the respective pstore file.
+
+Persistent function tracing
+---------------------------
+
+Persistent function tracing might be useful for debugging software or hardware
+related hangs. The functions call chain log is stored in a ``ftrace-ramoops``
+file. Here is an example of usage::
+
+ # mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug/
+ # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/pstore/record_ftrace
+ # reboot -f
+ [...]
+ # mount -t pstore pstore /mnt/
+ # tail /mnt/ftrace-ramoops
+ 0 ffffffff8101ea64 ffffffff8101bcda native_apic_mem_read <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x6a/0xc0
+ 0 ffffffff8101ea44 ffffffff8101bcf6 native_apic_mem_write <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x86/0xc0
+ 0 ffffffff81020084 ffffffff8101a4b5 hpet_disable <- native_machine_shutdown+0x75/0x90
+ 0 ffffffff81005f94 ffffffff8101a4bb iommu_shutdown_noop <- native_machine_shutdown+0x7b/0x90
+ 0 ffffffff8101a6a1 ffffffff8101a437 native_machine_emergency_restart <- native_machine_restart+0x37/0x40
+ 0 ffffffff811f9876 ffffffff8101a73a acpi_reboot <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xaa/0x1e0
+ 0 ffffffff8101a514 ffffffff8101a772 mach_reboot_fixups <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xe2/0x1e0
+ 0 ffffffff811d9c54 ffffffff8101a7a0 __const_udelay <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0x110/0x1e0
+ 0 ffffffff811d9c34 ffffffff811d9c80 __delay <- __const_udelay+0x30/0x40
+ 0 ffffffff811d9d14 ffffffff811d9c3f delay_tsc <- __delay+0xf/0x20