Re: lcrash and debian

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Tom Morano wrote:

> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Micah Anderson" <[email protected]>
> To: "Tom Morano" <[email protected]>
> Cc: "Hariprasad Nellitheertha" <[email protected]>;
> <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 1:25 PM
> Subject: lcrash and debian
> 
> 
> > In order to make lcrash available as a debian package, I need to sort
> > out a couple things, I am hoping you folks can help me.
> >
> > First off, what is lkcdutils? Is it a combination of utilities from other
> > locations, modified specifically to work with lkcd?
> 
> lkcdutils is the application/utility side of the LKCD project. It contains
> utilities for configuring the system to generate crash dumps, save dumps
> after a system crash/reboot, and analyze the resulting dumps. lkcdutils also
> contains various libraries for accessing kernel data in a dump image (or
> live system memory).

This is how I understood lkcdutils as well, but when I begain putting
it together for debian I got confused as to all the different elements
involved. 

What I would like to do for debian is take the user-land binaries of
the utilities for creating dumps and analysis and put them in a
package called lkcdutils. Then I would like to put all the libraries
and other useful development pieces in a separate lkcdutils-dev
package. This is typically how it is done in Debian. Once I get my
hands on lkcdutils I will probably need your help sorting out the
pieces.

Is there a "release" of lkcdutils that corresponds with the newest
patch-sets? This would be the best for me to get, however I can also
pull from CVS the appropriate things and create for myself a tarball
to build the package from. Please let me know how I should do this so
I can get started.


> > Included in lkcdutils there is "crash". From what I can tell, crash is
> > an older version of something that comes from
> > http://people.redhat.com/anderson/ or
> > http://oss.missioncriticallinux.com/projects/crash (I am not sure
> > which). Is the crash included in lkcdutils something different, if so
> > what?
> 
> You are correct in your first point. What is in lkcdutils is an older
> version of the crash utility used by RedHat. It was placed in the lkcdutils
> source as sort of a place holder when Mission Critical Linux dropped work on

Ok, so it seems like I should keep "crash" from my package (as the
redhat version is currently being packaged by someone else).

> it. Currently, the lcrash utility uses some of the gdb libraries contained
> in the crash source.

However, this makes me think that I cannot remove crash completely...
Are there plans to move the necessary gdb libraries from crash into
lcrash?

> > Second, how is lcrash related to crash?
> 
> These two utilities are related only in the similarity of their
> functionality. They essentially both attempt to do the same things when
> analyzing a system dump image (list running tasks, generate backtraces, dump
> system memory, etc.).
> 
> As we go through the process of celaning up LKCD, we need to see if it makes
> sense to leave the crash code in lkcdutils (most likley it does not).

This makes sense, it may be that I will need to include it in the
package until that happens. Most likely it would be put in the
lkcdutils-dev package as it is only needed for building.

> > And finally, what should I make available to debian users to be able
> > to work with things generated from the lkcd kernel patch?
> 
> You will need the lkcdutils infrastructure for configuring the system and
> saving the dumps. You will also need lcrash to analyze the dumps. I'm not
> that familiar with the debian environment with regard to such things as
> system startup scripts, etc. There may need to be some issues there (or
> not).

I'll tackle those as I get to them.

> > I am working with very little time to resolve these issues, if I
> > cannot get a set of utilities to go with the lkcd kernel patch, then
> > it is likely that patch will be removed entirely from this version of
> > Debian. Instead, I would like to get it resolved so we can include it!
> 
> Sure, I would like to see that also. I'll help in any way I can. BTW, what
> time frame are we talking about?

Good question... This is hard to pin down when new packages will be
frozen, the threat is that it should've happened already, but it
hasn't yet... so I anticipate it within the next week. I will try to
find out more details.

Micah


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: IT Product Guide on ITManagersJournal
Use IT products in your business? Tell us what you think of them. Give us
Your Opinions, Get Free ThinkGeek Gift Certificates! Click to find out more
http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/guidepromo.tmpl