linux/Documentation/ABI/testing/pstore
Matthew Garrett dee28e72b6 pstore: Allow the user to explicitly choose a backend
pstore only allows one backend to be registered at present, but the
system may provide several. Add a parameter to allow the user to choose
which backend will be used rather than just relying on load order.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
2011-07-22 16:14:39 -07:00

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Where: /dev/pstore/...
Date: March 2011
Kernel Version: 2.6.39
Contact: tony.luck@intel.com
Description: Generic interface to platform dependent persistent storage.
Platforms that provide a mechanism to preserve some data
across system reboots can register with this driver to
provide a generic interface to show records captured in
the dying moments. In the case of a panic the last part
of the console log is captured, but other interesting
data can also be saved.
# mount -t pstore -o kmsg_bytes=8000 - /dev/pstore
$ ls -l /dev/pstore
total 0
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 7896 Nov 30 15:38 dmesg-erst-1
Different users of this interface will result in different
filename prefixes. Currently two are defined:
"dmesg" - saved console log
"mce" - architecture dependent data from fatal h/w error
Once the information in a file has been read, removing
the file will signal to the underlying persistent storage
device that it can reclaim the space for later re-use.
$ rm /dev/pstore/dmesg-erst-1
The expectation is that all files in /dev/pstore
will be saved elsewhere and erased from persistent store
soon after boot to free up space ready for the next
catastrophe.
The 'kmsg_bytes' mount option changes the target amount of
data saved on each oops/panic. Pstore saves (possibly
multiple) files based on the record size of the underlying
persistent storage until at least this amount is reached.
Default is 10 Kbytes.
Pstore only supports one backend at a time. If multiple
backends are available, the preferred backend may be
set by passing the pstore.backend= argument to the kernel at
boot time.