[PATCH] kdump: dynamic per cpu allocation of memory for saving cpu registers

- In case of system crash, current state of cpu registers is saved in memory
  in elf note format.  So far memory for storing elf notes was being allocated
  statically for NR_CPUS.

- This patch introduces dynamic allocation of memory for storing elf notes.
  It uses alloc_percpu() interface.  This should lead to better memory usage.

- Introduced based on Andi Kleen's and Eric W. Biederman's suggestions.

- This patch also moves memory allocation for elf notes from architecture
  dependent portion to architecture independent portion.  Now crash_notes is
  architecture independent.  The whole idea is that size of memory to be
  allocated per cpu (MAX_NOTE_BYTES) can be architecture dependent and
  allocation of this memory can be architecture independent.

Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@in.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/kexec.c b/kernel/kexec.c
index 2c95848..1197de8 100644
--- a/kernel/kexec.c
+++ b/kernel/kexec.c
@@ -26,6 +26,9 @@
 #include <asm/system.h>
 #include <asm/semaphore.h>
 
+/* Per cpu memory for storing cpu states in case of system crash. */
+note_buf_t* crash_notes;
+
 /* Location of the reserved area for the crash kernel */
 struct resource crashk_res = {
 	.name  = "Crash kernel",
@@ -1060,3 +1063,16 @@ void crash_kexec(struct pt_regs *regs)
 		xchg(&kexec_lock, 0);
 	}
 }
+
+static int __init crash_notes_memory_init(void)
+{
+	/* Allocate memory for saving cpu registers. */
+	crash_notes = alloc_percpu(note_buf_t);
+	if (!crash_notes) {
+		printk("Kexec: Memory allocation for saving cpu register"
+		" states failed\n");
+		return -ENOMEM;
+	}
+	return 0;
+}
+module_init(crash_notes_memory_init)