1SYSTEMD-PSTORE.SERVICE(8) systemd-pstore.service SYSTEMD-PSTORE.SERVICE(8)
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6 systemd-pstore.service, systemd-pstore - A service to archive contents
7 of pstore
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10 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-pstore
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12 systemd-pstore.service
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15 systemd-pstore.service is a system service that archives the contents
16 of the Linux persistent storage filesystem, pstore, to other storage,
17 thus preserving the existing information contained in the pstore, and
18 clearing pstore storage for future error events.
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20 Linux provides a persistent storage file system, pstore, that can store
21 error records when the kernel dies (or reboots or powers-off). These
22 records in turn can be referenced to debug kernel problems (currently
23 the kernel stores the tail of the kernel log, which also contains a
24 stack backtrace, into pstore).
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26 The pstore file system supports a variety of backends that map onto
27 persistent storage, such as the ACPI ERST and UEFI variables. The
28 pstore backends typically offer a relatively small amount of persistent
29 storage, e.g. 64KiB, which can quickly fill up and thus prevent
30 subsequent kernel crashes from recording errors. Thus there is a need
31 to monitor and extract the pstore contents so that future kernel
32 problems can also record information in the pstore.
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34 The pstore service is independent of the kdump service. In cloud
35 environments specifically, host and guest filesystems are on remote
36 filesystems (e.g. iSCSI or NFS), thus kdump relies (implicitly and/or
37 explicitly) upon proper operation of networking software *and* hardware
38 *and* infrastructure. Thus it may not be possible to capture a kernel
39 coredump to a file since writes over the network may not be possible.
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41 The pstore backend, on the other hand, is completely local and provides
42 a path to store error records which will survive a reboot and aid in
43 post-mortem debugging.
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45 The systemd-pstore executable does the actual work. Upon starting, the
46 pstore.conf file is read and the /sys/fs/pstore/ directory contents are
47 processed according to the options. Pstore files are written to the
48 journal, and optionally saved into /var/lib/systemd/pstore/.
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51 The behavior of systemd-pstore is configured through the configuration
52 file /etc/systemd/pstore.conf and corresponding snippets
53 /etc/systemd/pstore.conf.d/*.conf, see pstore.conf(5).
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55 Disabling pstore processing
56 To disable pstore processing by systemd-pstore, set
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58 Storage=none
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60 in pstore.conf(5).
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62 Kernel parameters
63 The kernel has two parameters,
64 /sys/module/kernel/parameters/crash_kexec_post_notifiers and
65 /sys/module/printk/parameters/always_kmsg_dump, that control writes
66 into pstore. The first enables storing of the kernel log (including
67 stack trace) into pstore upon a panic or crash, and the second enables
68 storing of the kernel log upon a normal shutdown (shutdown, reboot,
69 halt). These parameters can be managed via the tmpfiles.d(5) mechanism,
70 specifically the file /usr/lib/tmpfiles/systemd-pstore.conf.
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73 Data stored in the journal can be viewed with journalctl(1) as usual.
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76 pstore.conf(5)
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80systemd 250 SYSTEMD-PSTORE.SERVICE(8)