• Bernhard Kaindl's avatar
    x86: early boot debugging via FireWire (ohci1394_dma=early) · f212ec4b
    Bernhard Kaindl authored
    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...
    f212ec4b
Makefile 2.67 KB