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coredump: Document coredump code exclusively used by cell spufs
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Oleg Nesterov recently asked[1] why is there an unshare_files in
do_coredump.  After digging through all of the callers of lookup_fd it
turns out that it is
arch/powerpc/platforms/cell/spufs/coredump.c:coredump_next_context
that needs the unshare_files in do_coredump.

Looking at the history[2] this code was also the only piece of coredump code
that required the unshare_files when the unshare_files was added.

Looking at that code it turns out that cell is also the only
architecture that implements elf_coredump_extra_notes_size and
elf_coredump_extra_notes_write.

I looked at the gdb repo[3] support for cell has been removed[4] in binutils
2.34.  Geoff Levand reports he is still getting questions on how to
run modern kernels on the PS3, from people using 3rd party firmware so
this code is not dead.  According to Wikipedia the last PS3 shipped in
Japan sometime in 2017.  So it will probably be a little while before
everyone's hardware dies.

Add some comments briefly documenting the coredump code that exists
only to support cell spufs to make it easier to understand the
coredump code.  Eventually the hardware will be dead, or their won't
be userspace tools, or the coredump code will be refactored and it
will be too difficult to update a dead architecture and these comments
make it easy to tell where to pull to remove cell spufs support.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20201123175052.GA20279@redhat.com
[2] 179e037 ("do_coredump(): make sure that descriptor table isn't shared")
[3] git://sourceware.org/git/binutils-gdb.git
[4] abf516c6931a ("Remove Cell Broadband Engine debugging support").
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/87h7pdnlzv.fsf_-_@x220.int.ebiederm.org
Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
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Eric W. Biederman committed Dec 10, 2020
1 parent 125c00a commit c39ab6d
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2 changes: 2 additions & 0 deletions fs/binfmt_elf.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2198,6 +2198,7 @@ static int elf_core_dump(struct coredump_params *cprm)
{
size_t sz = get_note_info_size(&info);

/* For cell spufs */
sz += elf_coredump_extra_notes_size();

phdr4note = kmalloc(sizeof(*phdr4note), GFP_KERNEL);
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -2261,6 +2262,7 @@ static int elf_core_dump(struct coredump_params *cprm)
if (!write_note_info(&info, cprm))
goto end_coredump;

/* For cell spufs */
if (elf_coredump_extra_notes_write(cprm))
goto end_coredump;

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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions fs/coredump.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -790,6 +790,7 @@ void do_coredump(const kernel_siginfo_t *siginfo)
}

/* get us an unshared descriptor table; almost always a no-op */
/* The cell spufs coredump code reads the file descriptor tables */
retval = unshare_files();
if (retval)
goto close_fail;
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