debugger: reachable from the console, and named on the crash screen
Two things, both about the debugger being available at the moment you
actually need it rather than once a shell exists.
**Ctrl-G on the console runs every view.** No filesystem, no /dev, no
shell -- it is the last thing main() sets up before entering the scheduler,
so it answers from early in boot, which is exactly when boot problems
happen. It sits beside the older Ctrl-P, and the difference between them is
the interesting part: procdump() takes no lock at all, deliberately,
because a lock is a way to hang while reporting a hang. The views cannot
follow that rule -- a free list read torn is worse than not read -- so they
take locks, and a lock must never be taken from an interrupt handler that
may have interrupted its holder. The key therefore *requests* and a kernel
thread *performs*. A scheduler too wedged to run a thread will not answer
Ctrl-G; Ctrl-P still will, and that division is the honest one.
**PSOGM says where the report went.** Its closing line used to be an
addr2line command, which the call chain no longer needs -- it prints names
now. What replaced it is the thing nobody would guess:
This report is in /proc/kmsg after a restart.
schdbg, or Ctrl-G on the console, asks more.
PSOGM -- Purple Screen of Guru Meditation
"Restart and read it" beats "photograph this screen" by a wide margin, and
until the log outlived the kernel it was not true. Both panic.c and
graphics.md had claimed in writing that the screen was the only artefact of
a crash; neither says so now. The QR code stays, because it is still the
only channel that works when the machine will not come back at all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2
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parent
113595f80b
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@ -200,10 +200,24 @@ fine.
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| | Works when |
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|---|---|
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| `sysrq g` | always — every view to the console, no process, no filesystem, no client program |
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| `/dev/dbg` | there is a scheduler and a filesystem |
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| **Ctrl-G** on the console | there is a scheduler — so from early in boot, with nothing mounted and nothing in userspace started |
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| `sysrq g` | `/proc` is mounted |
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| `/dev/dbg` | `/dev` is mounted |
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| `schdbg` | there is a shell |
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**Ctrl-G is the one that matters for boot problems**, because it is the only
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one that does not need a filesystem. It sits beside the older Ctrl-P, which
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dumps the process table — and the difference between them is worth knowing.
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`procdump()` takes **no lock at all**, deliberately: a lock is a way to hang
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while reporting a hang. The views cannot follow that rule, because a free list
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or a socket table read torn is worse than not read. So they take locks, and a
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lock must never be taken from an interrupt handler that may have interrupted
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its holder.
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The key therefore *requests* and a kernel thread *performs*. The cost is stated
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plainly: a scheduler too wedged to run a thread will not answer Ctrl-G. Ctrl-P
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still will, and that division of labour is the honest one.
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A watchpoint's *hits* go to the console rather than to any of these, because
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they happen while you are not looking, which is the point of having them.
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@ -342,6 +356,10 @@ something that reports nonsense.
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watchpoint on something `cprintf` itself writes is silently dropped rather
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than looping; the handler guards against re-entering itself per CPU.
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- **A watchpoint takes up to one timer tick** to reach the other CPUs.
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- **Ctrl-G needs a working scheduler**, per the note above. Before
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`dbg_thread_start()` — which is the last thing `main()` does before entering
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the scheduler — nothing answers but the log, and the log is enough because it
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is read on the *next* boot.
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- **No network transport.** The plan puts a TCP bridge in a userspace daemon,
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deliberately outside the kernel; it does not exist, so the debugger is local
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or serial only.
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@ -179,17 +179,36 @@ you it stopped — which is both truer and much less alarming.
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face that is obviously a cartoon, then the facts. Whoever is reading this is
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already having a bad time.
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**It says considerably more than it needs to.** The screen is the only artefact
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of a panic — no core dump, no log to go back to — so everything cheap to collect
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is collected: stop code, fault address, which CPU, which process, how far into
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the boot, where the kernel is loaded, and a call chain. Anything left out is
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gone. All of it goes to the serial line in the same order, which is what
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`bootcheck` reads and what you get when the crash happens before there is a
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framebuffer at all.
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**It says considerably more than it needs to.** Everything cheap to collect is
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collected: stop code, fault address, which CPU, which process, how far into the
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boot, where the kernel is loaded, and a call chain — and since
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[debugging.md](debugging.md)'s symbol table, the call chain is *names*:
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`panic+0x5f`, `proc_sysrq_cmd+0xb3`, `sys_writev+0x12b`. All of it goes to the
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serial line in the same order, which is what `bootcheck` reads and what you get
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when the crash happens before there is a framebuffer at all.
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Once painted, `panicked` is set and `consputc` spins rather than writing, so
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nothing can scribble over the report.
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### It is no longer the only copy
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This screen used to be the only artefact of a panic — this file said so, and so
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did `panic.c`'s own header. That stopped being true when the kernel log started
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outliving the kernel, and the closing lines changed to match:
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```
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This report is in /proc/kmsg after a restart.
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schdbg, or Ctrl-G on the console, asks more.
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PSOGM -- Purple Screen of Guru Meditation
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```
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The first line replaced an `addr2line` command, which the call chain no longer
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needs. It is the more useful instruction by a wide margin, and it is the one
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nobody would guess: **restart and read it** beats photographing the screen.
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The QR code below is still drawn, and still earns its place — it is the only
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channel that works when the machine will not come back at all.
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### The QR code
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`kernel/core/qr.c`. **A panic report is worth nothing if it cannot leave a
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