Re: Kdump

[Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net>]

Christina O'Donnell <cdo@mutix.org> writes:

> Hi guix and guixesses,
>
> I'm still enjoying my guix machine crashing every other week despite changing all the software and half the hardware. So I'm trying to get kdump
> working so I can get to the real reason behind it. However I see that kdump-tools haven't been packaged yet. I see this as an opportunity for me to
> contribute to Guix, but it'll be my first time.
>
> - How interested would people be in me packaging kdump and related tools?

More debugging tools (and docs!) are always welcome IMHO.

> - Is there a reason why it's not there already?
>
> - Has it been tried before?

Searching the mailing lists doesn't turn up much, so I assume no one has
tried it:
https://yhetil.org/guix/?q=kdump

> The scope seems to be around 3-4 packages and a system service. Does that sound about right or could there be more I'm missing?
>
> On Debian there's:
>
> crash/testing,now 8.0.2-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
>   kernel debugging utility, allowing gdb like syntax
>
> kdump-tools/testing,now 1:1.8.1 amd64 [installed]
>   scripts and tools for automating kdump (Linux crash dumps)
>
> libkdumpfile-dev/testing 0.5.1-1 amd64
>   libkdumpfile development libraries and header files
>
> libkdumpfile-doc/testing,testing 0.5.1-1 all
>   Kernel coredump file access (documentation)
>
> libkdumpfile10/testing 0.5.1-1 amd64
>   Kernel coredump file access
>
> python3-libkdumpfile/testing 0.5.1-1 amd64
>   Python bindings for libkdumpfile
>
> I'd want to package all of these except the python bindings. I see that kexec-tools is already in guix which is good!
>
> Is this a sensible direction?
>
> Kind regards,
>  - Christina

I'd say go for it!  If they are mostly written in C then you probably
don't have to package a lot of transitive dependencies.  Looking in
gnu/packages/linux.scm could be a good starting point for packaging
kernel related tools.