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Chapter 20. Firmware assisted dump mechanisms
Firmware assisted dump (fadump) is an alternative to kdump on IBM POWER systems. It uses onboard firmware to isolate memory regions and prevent accidental overwriting of crash analysis data. The fadump utility is optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM POWER systems.
20.1. Firmware assisted dump on IBM PowerPC hardware
The fadump utility captures vmcore from a fully-reset system by using firmware to preserve memory during a crash. It reuses kdump scripts to save the file. Preserved regions include all system memory except boot memory, registers, and hardware page tables.
The fadump mechanism offers improved reliability over the traditional dump type, by rebooting the partition and using a new kernel to dump the data from the previous kernel crash. The fadump requires an IBM POWER6 processor-based or later version hardware platform.
For further details about the fadump mechanism, including PowerPC specific methods of resetting hardware, see the /usr/share/doc/kdump-utils/fadump-howto.txt file.
The area of memory that is not preserved, known as boot memory, is the amount of RAM required to successfully boot the kernel after a crash event. By default, the boot memory size is 256MB or 5% of total system RAM, whichever is larger.
Unlike kexec-initiated event, the fadump mechanism uses the production kernel to recover a crash dump. When booting after a crash, PowerPC hardware makes the device node /proc/device-tree/rtas/ibm.kernel-dump available to the proc filesystem (procfs). The fadump-aware kdump scripts, check for the stored vmcore, and then complete the system reboot cleanly.
20.2. Enabling firmware assisted dump mechanism
To enhance the crash dumping capabilities of IBM POWER systems, enable the firmware assisted dump (fadump) mechanism.
In the Secure Boot environment, the GRUB boot loader allocates a boot memory region, known as the Real Mode Area (RMA). The RMA has a size of 512 MB, divided among the boot components. If a component exceeds its size allocation, GRUB fails with an out-of-memory (OOM) error.
Do not enable firmware assisted dump (fadump) mechanism in the Secure Boot environment on RHEL 9.1 and earlier versions. The GRUB boot loader fails with the following error:
error: ../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:376:out of memory.
Press any key to continue…
The system is recoverable only if you increase the default initramfs size due to the fadump configuration.
For information about workaround methods to recover the system, see the System boot ends in GRUB Out of Memory (OOM) article.
Prerequisites
- You have root permissions on the system.
Procedure
-
Install the
kexec-tools,kdump-utils, andmakedumpfilepackages. Configure the default value for
crashkernel:# kdumpctl reset-crashkernel --fadump=on --kernel=ALLOptional: Reserve boot memory instead of the default value:
# grubby --update-kernel ALL --args="fadump=on crashkernel=xxM"xxMis the required memory size in megabytes.NoteWhen specifying boot configuration options, test the configurations by rebooting the kernel with
kdumpenabled. If thekdumpkernel fails to boot, increase thecrashkernelvalue gradually to set an appropriate value.Reboot for changes to take effect:
# reboot
20.3. Firmware assisted dump mechanisms on IBM Z hardware
Use firmware assisted dump mechanisms, such as sadump and VMDUMP, to capture the machine state on IBM Z systems. These tools operate during the early boot phase, so you can analyze system failures that occur before the kdump service starts.
IBM Z systems support the following firmware assisted dump mechanisms:
-
Stand-alone dump (sadump) -
VMDUMP
The kdump infrastructure is supported and used on IBM Z systems. However, using one of the firmware assisted dump (fadump) methods for IBM Z has the following benefits:
-
The system console initiates and controls the
sadumpmechanism, and stores it on anIPLbootable device. -
The
VMDUMPmechanism is similar tosadump. This tool is also initiated from the system console, but retrieves the resulting dump from hardware and copies it to the system for analysis. -
These methods (similarly to other hardware based dump mechanisms) have the ability to capture the state of a machine in the early boot phase, before the
kdumpservice starts. -
Although
VMDUMPcontains a mechanism to receive the dump file into a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, the configuration and control ofVMDUMPis managed from the IBM Z Hardware console.
20.4. Using sadump on Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST systems
To capture a fallback dump when kdump fails on Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST systems, use sadump. Configure kdump using the Management Board (MMB) interface, then enable and manually start sadump.
Procedure
Add or edit the following lines in the
/etc/sysctl.conffile to ensure thatkdumpstarts as expected forsadump:kernel.panic=0 kernel.unknown_nmi_panic=1WarningIn particular, ensure that after
kdump, the system does not reboot. If the system reboots afterkdumphas failed to save thevmcorefile, then it is not possible to start thesadump.Set the
failure_actionparameter in/etc/kdump.confappropriately ashaltorshell.failure_action shellSee the FUJITSU Server PRIMEQUEST 2000 Series Installation Manual for more information.
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