Blockconsole is a console driver very roughly similar to netconsole. Instead of sending messages out via UDP, they are written to a block device. Typically a USB stick is chosen, although in principle any block device will do.
In most cases blockconsole is useful where netconsole is not, i.e. single machines without network access or without an accessable netconsole capture server. When using both blockconsole and netconsole, I have found netconsole to sometimes create a mess under high message load (sysrq-t, etc.) while blockconsole does not. Most importantly, a number of bugs were identified and fixed that would have been unexplained machine reboots without blockconsole. More highlights: * reasonably small and self-contained code, * some 100+ machine years of runtime, * nice tutorial with a 30-sec guide for the impatient. Special thanks to Borislav Petkov for many improvements and kicking my behind to provide a proper git tree and resend patches. Git tree is on kernel.org and I intend to keep it stable, as people seem to be using it already. It has been in -next since Mar 7. git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/joern/bcon2.git Joern Engel (10): do_mounts: constify name_to_dev_t parameter add blockconsole version 1.1 printk: add CON_ALLDATA console flag netconsole: use CON_ALLDATA blockconsole: use CON_ALLDATA bcon: add a release work struct bcon: check for hdparm in bcon_tail bcon: remove version 1.0 support bcon: Fix wrap-around behaviour netconsole: s/syslogd/cancd/ in documentation Takashi Iwai (4): blockconsole: Allow to pass a device file path to bcon_tail blockconsole: Fix undefined MAX_RT_PRIO blockconsole: Rename device_lock with bc_device_lock blockconsole: Mark a local work struct static Documentation/block/blockconsole.txt | 94 ++++ Documentation/block/blockconsole/bcon_tail | 82 +++ Documentation/block/blockconsole/mkblockconsole | 29 ++ Documentation/networking/netconsole.txt | 16 +- block/partitions/Makefile | 1 + block/partitions/blockconsole.c | 22 + block/partitions/check.c | 3 + block/partitions/check.h | 3 + drivers/block/Kconfig | 6 + drivers/block/Makefile | 1 + drivers/block/blockconsole.c | 618 +++++++++++++++++++++++ drivers/net/netconsole.c | 2 +- include/linux/blockconsole.h | 7 + include/linux/console.h | 1 + include/linux/mount.h | 2 +- init/do_mounts.c | 2 +- kernel/printk.c | 5 +- 17 files changed, 885 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) create mode 100644 Documentation/block/blockconsole.txt create mode 100755 Documentation/block/blockconsole/bcon_tail create mode 100755 Documentation/block/blockconsole/mkblockconsole create mode 100644 block/partitions/blockconsole.c create mode 100644 drivers/block/blockconsole.c create mode 100644 include/linux/blockconsole.h -- 1.7.10.4 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
