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  • Thomas Gleixner's avatar
    infrastructure to debug (dynamic) objects · 3ac7fe5a
    Thomas Gleixner authored
    We can see an ever repeating problem pattern with objects of any kind in the
    kernel:
    
    1) freeing of active objects
    2) reinitialization of active objects
    
    Both problems can be hard to debug because the crash happens at a point where
    we have no chance to decode the root cause anymore.  One problem spot are
    kernel timers, where the detection of the problem often happens in interrupt
    context and usually causes the machine to panic.
    
    While working on a timer related bug report I had to hack specialized code
    into the timer subsystem to get a reasonable hint for the root cause.  This
    debug hack was fine for temporary use, but far from a mergeable solution due
    to the intrusiveness into the timer code.
    
    The code further lacked the ability to detect and report the root cause
    instantly and keep the system operational.
    
    Keeping the system operational is important to get hold of the debug
    information without special debugging aids like serial consoles and special
    knowledge of ...
    3ac7fe5a