Re: 3.0 wishlist Was: Overview of 2.2.x goals?

Albert D. Cahalan (acahalan@cs.uml.edu)
Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:45:08 -0500 (EST)


Dan Hollis writes:
> On Mon, 19 Jan 1998, linux kernel account wrote:

>> I think you should point out the classic horror story:
>>
>> Imagine the panic results in the coruption of the disk driver or
>> the FS and it decides to dump core all over your important data..
>
> Thats why BSD and others do a CRC on the dump code to make sure
> everything is consistent enough to do a dump. It also only writes
> to reserved section of the disk and not the filesystem. Thus the
> horror story becomes vapor.

Oddly however, NetBSD manages to trash partitions.

You'd need to CRC everything the dump code depends on:
disk driver -> kmalloc -> slab system...

Even when that looks good, the _hardware_ may be confused.