x86: early boot debugging via FireWire (ohci1394_dma=early)
This patch adds a new configuration option, which adds support for a new
early_param which gets checked in arch/x86/kernel/setup_{32,64}.c:setup_arch()
to decide wether OHCI-1394 FireWire controllers should be initialized and
enabled for physical DMA access to allow remote debugging of early problems
like issues ACPI or other subsystems which are executed very early.
If the config option is not enabled, no code is changed, and if the boot
paramenter is not given, no new code is executed, and independent of that,
all new code is freed after boot, so the config option can be even enabled
in standard, non-debug kernels.
With specialized tools, it is then possible to get debugging information
from machines which have no serial ports (notebooks) such as the printk
buffer contents, or any data which can be referenced from global pointers,
if it is stored below the 4GB limit and even memory dumps of of the physical
RAM region below the 4GB limit can b...
parent
6194ba6f
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