[Crash-utility] [PATCH] crash: Support a dumpfile in the flattened format.

[Dave Anderson]

----- Original Message -----
> Hi Dave,
> 
> makedumpfile command can create a dumpfile in the flattened format by -F
> option, the format is useful for transporting the dump data by SSH.
> 
> But the crash utility could not read the dumpfile directly, so a user
> should create a readable dumpfile by -R option of makedumpfile.
> That was not userfriendly, and this patch is the solution for it.
> 
> If applying this patch to the crash utility, it can read a dumpfile in
> the flattened format directly.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Ken'ichi Ohmichi
> 

Hi Ken'ichi,

I did make a few minor changes to your patch as written.

I renamed the multi-purpose read_dump_file() function to be
read_flattened_format(), and only call it when the dumpfile 
is a flat vmcore.  For clarification/maintainability, I prefer
to keep the original lseek/read calls in diskdump.c and netdump.c
as they were, mainly because it's not intuitive to have the 
traditional netdump, kdump, and diskdump dumpfiles require an 
access function that is located in the new makedumpfile.c.

I also fixed a couple compiler-warning issues, removed the
change to file_elf_version(), which would never be called for
a for a flat file because it's LKCD only, and added a simple
makedumpfile header dump for "help -n".

But other than that, it's pretty much as you posted.

Again, I want to thank you for implementing this so quickly.
This is an extremely useful feature.

Queued for the next release.

Thanks,
  Dave