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 be taken without any cooperation from the
CPU of the host, so the machine can be crashed early, it does not matter.

In the extreme, even kernel debuggers can be accessed in this way. I wrote
a small kgdb module and an accompanying gdb stub for FireWire which allows
to gdb to talk to kgdb using remote remory reads and writes over FireWire.

An version of the gdb stub fore FireWire is able to read all global data
from a system which is running a a normal kernel without any kernel debugger,
without any interruption or support of the system's CPU. That way, e.g. the
task struct and so on can be read and even manipulated when the physical DMA
access is granted.

A HOWTO is included in this patch, in Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt
and I've put a copy online at
ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/docs/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt

It also has links to all the tools which are available to make use of it
another copy of it is online at:
ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/kernel/ohci1394_dma_early-v2.diff

Signed-Off-By: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de>
Tested-By: Thomas Renninger <trenn@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 28 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.debug b/lib/Kconfig.debug
index aa56e631580..89f4035b526 100644
--- a/lib/Kconfig.debug
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.debug
@@ -586,5 +586,33 @@ config LATENCYTOP
           Enable this option if you want to use the LatencyTOP tool
           to find out which userspace is blocking on what kernel operations.
 
+config PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT
+        bool "Provide code for enabling DMA over FireWire early on boot"
+        depends on PCI && X86
+        help
+          If you want to debug problems which hang or crash the kernel early
+          on boot and the crashing machine has a FireWire port, you can use
+          this feature to remotely access the memory of the crashed machine
+          over FireWire. This employs remote DMA as part of the OHCI1394
+          specification which is now the standard for FireWire controllers.
+
+          With remote DMA, you can monitor the printk buffer remotely using
+          firescope and access all memory below 4GB using fireproxy from gdb.
+          Even controlling a kernel debugger is possible using remote DMA.
+
+          Usage:
+
+          If ohci1394_dma=early is used as boot parameter, it will initialize
+          all OHCI1394 controllers which are found in the PCI config space.
+
+          As all changes to the FireWire bus such as enabling and disabling
+          devices cause a bus reset and thereby disable remote DMA for all
+          devices, be sure to have the cable plugged and FireWire enabled on
+          the debugging host before booting the debug target for debugging.
+
+          This code (~1k) is freed after boot. By then, the firewire stack
+          in charge of the OHCI-1394 controllers should be used instead.
+
+          See Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt for more information.
 
 source "samples/Kconfig"