[PATCH] powerpc/xmon: add debugfs entry for xmon

[Michael Ellerman]

"Guilherme G. Piccoli" <gpiccoli at linux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:

> Currently the xmon debugger is set only via kernel boot command-line.
> It's disabled by default, and can be enabled with "xmon=on" on the
> command-line. Also, xmon may be accessed via sysrq mechanism, but once
> we enter xmon via sysrq,  it's  kept enabled until system is rebooted,
> even if we exit the debugger. A kernel crash will then lead to xmon
> instance, instead of triggering a kdump procedure (if configured), for
> example.
>
> This patch introduces a debugfs entry for xmon, allowing user to query
> its current state and change it if desired. Basically, the "xmon" file
> to read from/write to is under the debugfs mount point, on powerpc
> directory. Reading this file will provide the current state of the
> debugger, one of the following: "on", "off", "early" or "nobt". Writing
> one of these states to the file will take immediate effect on the debugger.

I like this in general.

But I think we can simplify it a bit.

I don't think we need the nobt state anymore. As far as I can see it was
added as a way to reinstate the old behaviour when the auto backtrace
mode was added, but I've never heard of anyone using it.

If anyone hits a crash where they really need that feature they can
always just hack the code to disable the backtrace.

So I think step 1 is a patch to drop the xmon_no_auto_backtrace stuff.

Also I'm not sure EARLY needs to be a separate state. It's just a
one-off invocation at boot, all we really need is just a single bit of
state communicated from early_parse_xmon() to xmon_setup(), ie. a static
bool would do.

If we agree with that, then there's only two states left, on and off, in
which case it can probably just be an int - and we can use a simple
attribute file rather than custom parsing.

> * I had this patch partially done for some time, and after a discussion
> at the kernel slack channel latest week, I decided to rebase and fix
> some remaining bugs. I'd change 'x' option to always disable the debugger,

Not quite.

'x' should exit and leave xmon in whatever state it was previously in.

cheers