Hi,

I want to use kdump-tools to dump the kernel for a diskless live
systems. This live system uses a custom made root tarball and initrd. On
boot, the root tarball is downloaded and extracted into tmpfs. The
system runs entirely on tmpfs.

Thus the initramfs cannot mount a root filesystem to access systemd, the
kdump-tools configuration, or other files.

Is there a way to include everything into the initramfs that is needed
to run makedumpfile? If not, can you recommend a way to implement it? I
am happy to to implement something (which has a chance to be accepted by
you or upstream).

After patching initramfs-tools to generate an initramfs (see #856589),
the kernel dump fails with:

  mount: can't find /root in /etc/fstab
  done.
  Target filesystem doesn't have requested /sbin/init.
  Begin: Running /scripts/local-bottom ... done.
  Begin: Running /scripts/init-bottom .... mount: mounting /dev on
  /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
  done.
  No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.
  modprobe: module ehci-orion not found in modules.dep

tags 856596 + patch
thanks

Hi,

attached are six patches to make kdump-config & makedumpfile work (at
least for our kdump-tools configuration). Please review these patches
and let me know what you think about them.