On Fri, 2012-06-15 at 15:23 -0700, Colin Cross wrote:
The decode also converts PCs to symbols, so for all the data to be useful you have to boot the exact same kernel. You could theoretically boot a different kernel with a compatible format, but you would have to manually extract the PCs from the dump and addr2line them against the correct vmlinux, which is probably more trouble than it's worth. Also, the binary data is stored inside a pstore_ram ringbuffer that may change formats between kernels. I would suggest documenting that this is only supposed to work booting back to the same kernel.
OK, I'm fine with this too, if it is well documented that the same kernel must be used. Make it similar to hibernating the box. That is, you don't want to boot into a different kernel after you shutdown by hibernating to the hard drive.
-- Steve