[Bug 1942784] Re: makedumpfile falls back to cp on focal with 5.11 kernel

[Brian Murray]

Hello Ioanna, or anyone else affected,

Accepted makedumpfile into focal-proposed. The package will build now
and be available at
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/makedumpfile/1:1.6.7-1ubuntu2.3 in
a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been
performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-
focal to verification-done-focal. If it does not fix the bug for you,
please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-
failed-focal. In either case, without details of your testing we will
not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

** Changed in: makedumpfile (Ubuntu Focal)
       Status: In Progress => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed verification-needed-focal

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1942784

Title:
  makedumpfile falls back to cp on focal with 5.11 kernel

Status in makedumpfile package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in makedumpfile source package in Focal:
  Fix Committed
Status in makedumpfile source package in Hirsute:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  [IMPACT]

  When running Focal with the hwe 5.11 kernel makedumpfile is not working as it should.
  Instead of compressing the dump makedumpfile falls back to cp.
  This can create problems on systems with very large RAM and result into exhausting all storage on the host.

  [FIX]

  This can be resolved with upstream commit f1197543d1c4 ([PATCH] Retrieve MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS from vmcoreinfo).
  The reason for falling back to cp is that without this patch makedumpfile calculates wrongly the memory layout.

  This happens after the kernel commit 1d50e5d0c505 ("crash_core, vmcoreinfo: Append 'MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS'to vmcoreinfo").
  With this commit applied, reading MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS from vmcoreinfo instead of inferring lead to correctly detecting the memory layout and creating the dump file properly.

  [TEST CASE]

  For testing a machine running focal with the 5.11 kernel is required.
  Then trigger a crash.
  On the console we can see that makedumpfile fails and `falls back to cp`.
  In /var/crash we can see that no dmesg file is created and instead of the dump file
  the uncompressed vmcoreinfo is created.

  [WHERE PROBLEMS COULD OCCUR]

  Any regression potential would involve the crash dump not being
  created after a crash in case kdump is configured.

  [OTHER]

  Only Focal with 5.11 kernel is affected.

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