Hi Bernhard,
We have the following observations & suggestions about the mock-up
screenshots. Sorry about the long mail and taking some time in
replying.
We would also like to suggest changes in the kdump user scripts
(kdump initrd) and based on that the yast kdump configuration
screens will need changes.
**************************************************************
1) General Settings
===================
We liked the three way enable/disable settings and they are at
the right place, but the other portions like kernel command line
or kdump commandline should be part of the expert settings as
generally user should be provided with default set of kernel
command line options and rarely one has to change them.
Instead of command line settings, it would be useful to have
the setting related to reserving memory for kdump kernel. The
tool can have display like
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total system Memory (MB): 4096 (just informative)
kdump Memory (MB): (A list box with a minimum memory value like 128, and
option to increase should be there)
Usable Memory (MB): 3968 (this is also informative)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Dump Settings
================
This should capture the settings about dump target and other misc settings
about daump saving. Apart from this, "the dump filtering" options for
the "makedumpfile" utility can also be integrated here. So,
Dump Target
-----------
(a radio button to select either of the three targets like
o Local filesystem
- here we can have a list box with list of valid disk partitions
with supported filesystems
- path location
o Network
- This is for possible future extention of dump saving mechanism using
which we can save the dump over network ie over NFS or scp, through
the kdump initrd. For this we will need following settings
- a radio button for selecting NFS or SCP
- IP address of the server
- path (exported path for NFS or target path for scp)
o Raw disk
- here we can have list of available paritions without any
filesystem on them
Default dump path (ie relative to the dump target)
-----------------
[ /var/log/dump ] (select directory button)
Dump filtering options
-----------------------
- This should capture settings for options for using the dump fitering
tool "makedumpfile". I am not sure right now if we need a separte
screen for this or "Dump settings" is ok.
3) Expert Settings
==================
- kdump kenrel command line options
[ ]
- path to custom kdump kernel
[ /boot/vmlinuz-my-kdump-kernel ]
- path to custom kdump kernel initrd
[ /boot/initrd-my-kdump.img ]
- Note: The current approach is to provide user a distro built kdump
kernel. But some users would like to use their own kernel to minimize the
reserve memory requirement. Also. the kdump initrd might be different if
the user is trying to save dump thruough initrd in soe unsual envirnment
like multipath IO etc.
*************************************************************************
These might be confusing but please let me know if I can elaborate more.
The kdump initrd related changes I was taking about are probably not the
right stuff for this mailing list but please bear it here.. so that we
can have the right context for discussions
1. The current approach in of using a _dedicated_ disk partition somewhat
defeats the purpose of kdump flexibility. This mandates that use has
to have a separte disk parition allocated just for kdump. The alternative
is to have initrd based solution. In past we have done a prototype for
such approach
http://lse.sf.net/kdump/patches/automation/sles9-sp2-mkinitrd-1.2-27.9-auto-...
Here using initrd we copy the dump directly to the disk filesystem
and avoid the intermediate step of copying to a raw partition and then
to target path. This approach does make initrd somewhat bigger in size but
it doesn't need user to have a dedicated disk partition just for kdump.
2. As of now there is no support for saving the dump over network using
NFS or scp. The network dump can also be done using the kdump initrd
once the user has specified right config parameters. So, overall kdump
initrd should be able to copy the dump to all possible targets depending
upon the user settings.
3. As of now the dump filtering tool is not integrated with kdump user scripts
so we can get that also integrated in the initrd and have smaller size
dumps based on options given to "makedumpfile" tool.
Thanks
Maneesh
----- Forwarded message from Bernhard Walle
