tjh.dev
Linux kernel mirror (for testing)
git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
kernel
os
linux
1[Sat Mar 2 10:32:33 PST 1996 KERNEL_BUG-HOWTO lm@sgi.com (Larry McVoy)]
2
3This is how to track down a bug if you know nothing about kernel hacking.
4It's a brute force approach but it works pretty well.
5
6You need:
7
8 . A reproducible bug - it has to happen predictably (sorry)
9 . All the kernel tar files from a revision that worked to the
10 revision that doesn't
11
12You will then do:
13
14 . Rebuild a revision that you believe works, install, and verify that.
15 . Do a binary search over the kernels to figure out which one
16 introduced the bug. I.e., suppose 1.3.28 didn't have the bug, but
17 you know that 1.3.69 does. Pick a kernel in the middle and build
18 that, like 1.3.50. Build & test; if it works, pick the mid point
19 between .50 and .69, else the mid point between .28 and .50.
20 . You'll narrow it down to the kernel that introduced the bug. You
21 can probably do better than this but it gets tricky.
22
23 . Narrow it down to a subdirectory
24
25 - Copy kernel that works into "test". Let's say that 3.62 works,
26 but 3.63 doesn't. So you diff -r those two kernels and come
27 up with a list of directories that changed. For each of those
28 directories:
29
30 Copy the non-working directory next to the working directory
31 as "dir.63".
32 One directory at time, try moving the working directory to
33 "dir.62" and mv dir.63 dir"time, try
34
35 mv dir dir.62
36 mv dir.63 dir
37 find dir -name '*.[oa]' -print | xargs rm -f
38
39 And then rebuild and retest. Assuming that all related
40 changes were contained in the sub directory, this should
41 isolate the change to a directory.
42
43 Problems: changes in header files may have occurred; I've
44 found in my case that they were self explanatory - you may
45 or may not want to give up when that happens.
46
47 . Narrow it down to a file
48
49 - You can apply the same technique to each file in the directory,
50 hoping that the changes in that file are self contained.
51
52 . Narrow it down to a routine
53
54 - You can take the old file and the new file and manually create
55 a merged file that has
56
57 #ifdef VER62
58 routine()
59 {
60 ...
61 }
62 #else
63 routine()
64 {
65 ...
66 }
67 #endif
68
69 And then walk through that file, one routine at a time and
70 prefix it with
71
72 #define VER62
73 /* both routines here */
74 #undef VER62
75
76 Then recompile, retest, move the ifdefs until you find the one
77 that makes the difference.
78
79Finally, you take all the info that you have, kernel revisions, bug
80description, the extent to which you have narrowed it down, and pass
81that off to whomever you believe is the maintainer of that section.
82A post to linux.dev.kernel isn't such a bad idea if you've done some
83work to narrow it down.
84
85If you get it down to a routine, you'll probably get a fix in 24 hours.
86
87My apologies to Linus and the other kernel hackers for describing this
88brute force approach, it's hardly what a kernel hacker would do. However,
89it does work and it lets non-hackers help fix bugs. And it is cool
90because Linux snapshots will let you do this - something that you can't
91do with vendor supplied releases.
92