Development/Howto/Report Kernel Bugs

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Reporting Kernel bugs

This document describes how to provide useful information in kernel bug reports.

Contents


Introduction

The form below is the suggested way to make kernel bugs reports on bugzilla, or even by e-mail. Note that you aren't obliged to use the bug reporting format, it is provided as a guide to the kind of information that can be useful to developers.

Kernel bug report format

  1. One line summary of the problem (on bugzilla, this is the 'summary' field):
  2. Full description of the problem/report:
  3. Keywords (i.e., modules, networking, kernel):
  4. Mandriva kernel version (from /proc/version ):
  5. Most recent Mandriva kernel version which did not have the bug:
  6. Output of Oops.. message (if applicable)
  7. Steps to reproduce (you can append shell scripts or little programs which triggers the bug)
  8. Environment
    1. Mandriva distribution version (from /etc/mandriva-release)
    2. Processor information (from /proc/cpuinfo ):
    3. /etc/modprobe.conf
    4. Module information ( lsmod ):
    5. Loaded driver and hardware information ( /proc/ioports, /proc/iomem )
    6. PCI information ( lspci -vvv as root)
    7. SCSI information (from /proc/scsi/scsi )
    8. Other information that might be relevant to the problem (please look in /proc, /sys and include all information that you think to be relevant):
  9. Other notes, patches, fixes, workarounds:

In case of a boot time panic

A boot time panic is an error at boot that ends with messages similar to:

 mounting root filesystem /dev/root with flags noatime
 mount:error 19 mounting ext3 flags noatime
 switching to new root
 error opening /dev/console!!!:2
 umounting old /proc
 umounting old /sys
 switchroot mount failed:22
 initrd failed
 kernel panic - not syning

In this case we will need:

  1. Screen capture until the panic (use a camera, a SerialConsole, or a pencil).
  Be sure to include anything from line Red Hat nash version 4.2.17mdk starting
  up to the line Kernel Panic - notsyncing : Attempted to kill init!
  Unfortunately since the machine panicked in graphic mode you will probably not be able to scroll up using Shift-PgUp
  so you will have to edit the bootloader command line and add the words vga=ask, 
  then choose a suitable text mode (the one with the more lines available)
  1. stdout and stderr from mkinitrd invocation, use the following command:

sh -x /sbin/mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-X.Y.Z-Wmdv.img X.Y.Z-Wmdv > /tmp/mkinitrd.log 2>/tmp/mkinitrd.err where X.Y.Z-Wmdv is the version of the kernel you are installing. To do the above you will need to boot from an older kernel, if you have a working one, or from the rescue CD.

References

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