xref: /openbmc/linux/Documentation/ABI/testing/pstore (revision 366f7e7a)
1Where:		/dev/pstore/...
2Date:		March 2011
3Kernel Version: 2.6.39
4Contact:	tony.luck@intel.com
5Description:	Generic interface to platform dependent persistent storage.
6
7		Platforms that provide a mechanism to preserve some data
8		across system reboots can register with this driver to
9		provide a generic interface to show records captured in
10		the dying moments.  In the case of a panic the last part
11		of the console log is captured, but other interesting
12		data can also be saved.
13
14		# mount -t pstore -o kmsg_bytes=8000 - /dev/pstore
15
16		$ ls -l /dev/pstore
17		total 0
18		-r--r--r-- 1 root root 7896 Nov 30 15:38 dmesg-erst-1
19
20		Different users of this interface will result in different
21		filename prefixes.  Currently two are defined:
22
23		"dmesg"	- saved console log
24		"mce"	- architecture dependent data from fatal h/w error
25
26		Once the information in a file has been read, removing
27		the file will signal to the underlying persistent storage
28		device that it can reclaim the space for later re-use.
29
30		$ rm /dev/pstore/dmesg-erst-1
31
32		The expectation is that all files in /dev/pstore
33		will be saved elsewhere and erased from persistent store
34		soon after boot to free up space ready for the next
35		catastrophe.
36
37		The 'kmsg_bytes' mount option changes the target amount of
38		data saved on each oops/panic. Pstore saves (possibly
39		multiple) files based on the record size of the underlying
40		persistent storage until at least this amount is reached.
41		Default is 10 Kbytes.
42