kexec-tools/crashkernel-howto.txt
Coiby Xu 4d1e02d340 remind the users to run zipl after calling grubby on s390x
s390x doesn't use GRUB. To make sure the boot entries are updated, call
zipl after running grubby.

Suggested-by: smitterl@redhat.com
Reviewed-by: Philipp Rudo <prudo@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Coiby Xu <coxu@redhat.com>
2022-08-03 11:09:55 +08:00

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Introduction
============
This document describes features the kexec-tools package provides for setting
and estimating the crashkernel value.
Kdump lives in a pre-reserved chunk of memory, and the size of the reserved
memory is specified by the `crashkernel=` kernel parameter. It's hard to
estimate an accurate `crashkernel=` value, so it's always recommended to test
kdump after you updated the `crashkernel=` value or changed the dump target.
Default crashkernel value
=========================
Latest kexec-tools provides "kdumpctl get-default-crashkernel" to retrieve
the default crashkernel value,
$ echo $(kdumpctl get-default-crashkernel)
1G-4G:192M,4G-64G:256M,64G-:512M
It will be taken as the default value of 'crashkernel=', you can use
this value as a reference for setting crashkernel value manually.
New installed system
====================
Anaconda is the OS installer which sets all the kernel boot cmdline on a newly
installed system. If kdump is enabled during Anaconda installation, Anaconda
will use the default crashkernel value as the default `crashkernel=` value on
the newly installed system.
Users can override the value during Anaconda installation manually.
Auto update of crashkernel boot parameter
=========================================
A new release of kexec-tools could update the default crashkernel value. By
default, kexec-tools would reset crashkernel to the new default value if it
detects the old default crashkernel value is used by installed kernels. If you
don't want kexec-tools to update the old default crashkernel to the new default
crashkernel, you can change auto_reset_crashkernel to no in kdump.conf.
Supported Bootloaders
---------------------
This auto update only works with GRUB2 and ZIPL, as kexec-tools heavily depends
on `grubby`. If other boot loaders are used, the user will have to update the
`crashkernel=` value manually.
Reset crashkernel to default value
==================================
kexec-tools only perform the auto update of crashkernel value when it can
confirm the boot kernel's crashkernel value is using its corresponding default
value and auto_reset_crashkernel=yes in kdump.conf. In other cases, the user
can reset the crashkernel value by themselves.
Reset using kdumpctl
--------------------
To make it easier to reset the `crashkernel=` kernel cmdline to this default
value properly, `kdumpctl` also provides a sub-command:
`kdumpctl reset-crashkernel [--kernel=path_to_kernel] [--reboot]`
This command will reset the bootloader's kernel cmdline to the default value.
It will also update bootloader config if the bootloader has a standalone config
file. User will have to reboot the machine after this command to make it take
effect if --reboot is not specified. For more details, please refer to the
reset-crashkernel command in `man kdumpctl`.
Reset manually
--------------
To reset the crashkernel value manually, it's recommended to use utils like
`grubby`. A one liner script for resetting `crashkernel=` value of all installed
kernels to the default value is:
grubby --update-kernel ALL --args "crashkernel=$(kdumpctl get-default-crashkernel)"
NOTE: On s390x you also need to run zipl for the change to take effect.
Estimate crashkernel
====================
The best way to estimate a usable crashkernel value is by testing kdump
manually. And you can set crashkernel to a large value, then adjust the
crashkernel value to an acceptable value gradually.
`kdumpctl` also provides a sub-command for doing rough estimating without
triggering kdump:
`kdumpctl estimate`
The output will be like this:
```
Encrypted kdump target requires extra memory, assuming using the keyslot with minimum memory requirement
Reserved crashkernel: 256M
Recommended crashkernel: 655M
Kernel image size: 47M
Kernel modules size: 12M
Initramfs size: 19M
Runtime reservation: 64M
LUKS required size: 512M
Large modules:
xfs: 1892352
nouveau: 2318336
WARNING: Current crashkernel size is lower than recommended size 655M.
```
It will generate a summary report about the estimated memory consumption
of each component of kdump. The value may not be accurate enough, but
would be a good start for finding a suitable crashkernel value.