Introduction¶

Ramoops is an oops/panic logger that writes its logs to RAM before the systemcrashes. It works by logging oopses and panics in a circular buffer. Ramoopsneeds a system with persistent RAM so that the content of that area cansurvive after a restart.

Ramoops concepts¶

Ramoops uses a predefined memory area to store the dump. The start and sizeand 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 apower of two.
• mem_type to specifiy if the memory type (default is pgprot_writecombine).

Typically the default value ofmem_type=0 should be used as that sets the pstoremapping to pgprot_writecombine. Settingmem_type=1 attempts to usepgprot_noncached, which only works on some platforms. This is because pstoredepends on atomic operations. At least on ARM, pgprot_noncached causes thememory to be mapped strongly ordered, and atomic operations on strongly orderedmemory are implementation defined, and won’t work on many ARMs such as omaps.

The memory area is divided intorecord_size chunks (also rounded down topower of two) and each kmesg dump writes arecord_size chunk ofinformation.

Limiting which kinds of kmsg dumps are stored can be controlled viathemax_reason value, as defined in include/linux/kmsg_dump.h’senumkmsg_dump_reason. For example, to store both Oopses and Panics,max_reason should be set to 2 (KMSG_DUMP_OOPS), to store only Panicsmax_reason should be set to 1 (KMSG_DUMP_PANIC). Setting this to 0(KMSG_DUMP_UNDEF), means the reason filtering will be controlled by theprintk.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 reseton 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 backto life (i.e. a watchdog triggered). In such cases, RAM may be somewhatcorrupt, 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 describedas before). For quick debugging, you can also reserve parts of memory duringboot and then use the reserved memory for ramoops. For example, assuming amachine with > 128 MB of memory, the following kernel command line will tellthe kernel to use only the first 128 MB of memory, and place ECC-protectedramoops region at 128 MB boundary:

mem=128M ramoops.mem_address=0x8000000 ramoops.ecc=1

B. Use Device Tree bindings, as described inDocumentation/devicetree/bindings/reserved-memory/ramoops.txt.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 thenbe set through that platform data. An example of doing that is:

#include<linux/pstore_ram.h>[...]staticstructramoops_platform_dataramoops_data={.mem_size=<...>,.mem_address=<...>,.mem_type=<...>,.record_size=<...>,.max_reason=<...>,.ecc=<...>,};staticstructplatform_deviceramoops_dev={.name="ramoops",.dev={.platform_data=&ramoops_data,},};[...insideafunction...]intret;ret=platform_device_register(&ramoops_dev);if(ret){printk(KERN_ERR"unable to register platform device\n");returnret;}

You can specify either RAM memory or peripheral devices’ memory. However, whenspecifying 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 atimestamp 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 thesefiles isdmesg-ramoops-N, where N is the record number in memory. To deletea stored record from RAM, simply unlink the respective pstore file.

Persistent function tracing¶

Persistent function tracing might be useful for debugging software or hardwarerelated hangs. The functions call chain log is stored in aftrace-ramoopsfile. 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-ramoops0 ffffffff8101ea64  ffffffff8101bcda  native_apic_mem_read <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x6a/0xc00 ffffffff8101ea44  ffffffff8101bcf6  native_apic_mem_write <- disconnect_bsp_APIC+0x86/0xc00 ffffffff81020084  ffffffff8101a4b5  hpet_disable <- native_machine_shutdown+0x75/0x900 ffffffff81005f94  ffffffff8101a4bb  iommu_shutdown_noop <- native_machine_shutdown+0x7b/0x900 ffffffff8101a6a1  ffffffff8101a437  native_machine_emergency_restart <- native_machine_restart+0x37/0x400 ffffffff811f9876  ffffffff8101a73a  acpi_reboot <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xaa/0x1e00 ffffffff8101a514  ffffffff8101a772  mach_reboot_fixups <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0xe2/0x1e00 ffffffff811d9c54  ffffffff8101a7a0  __const_udelay <- native_machine_emergency_restart+0x110/0x1e00 ffffffff811d9c34  ffffffff811d9c80  __delay <- __const_udelay+0x30/0x400 ffffffff811d9d14  ffffffff811d9c3f  delay_tsc <- __delay+0xf/0x20