Bug 1686560

Description of problem:

The rhel-8.1.0 errata version of the crash utility, which is based
upon crash-7.2.3, should be rebased to the current upstream version,
currently at version crash-7.2.5, and soon to be crash-7.2.6.  There
are several new features and other bug fixes that have been applied 
to the upstream version make the tool significantly more useful than 
the current rhel-8.0.0 version, which is based upon crash-7.2.3 plus
a hodge-podge set of backports.  For example, the upstream version 
contains support for the new /proc/kcore VMCOREINFO ELF note, which
will be introduced in the rhel-8.1.0 kernel, support for the 
upstream kernel replacement of radix trees with the new xarray facility,
which affects several crash commands, and several fixes for other 
crash commands.  Furthermore, the crash-7.2.6 version, as of yet 
unreleased, will have support for ARM64 52-bit kernel virtual address
space that will be introduced in the rhel-8.1.0 kernel.

Furthermore, since Linux 4.19 and later kernels require crash-7.2.5,
the current rhel-8.0.0 version of crash cannot be utilized with Linux 
5.0.0-based RHEL ARK kernels.

It is far more efficient, and far safer, to rebase the crash 
package than to attempt to selectively backport individual patches.
As the owner and upstream maintainer, one of my primary goals is,
and always has been, to maintain backwards-compatibility whenever 
new fixes or features are applied.  The risk of regression is 
less with a rebase than it would be with selective backports.

It should be noted that nothing goes into the upstream version 
without my approval.  I perform all my testing on Fedora and RHEL
kernel versions, where each individual change is meticulously 
tested against a sample set of RHEL3, RHEL4, RHEL5, RHEL6, RHEL7,
Fedora, RHEL-ALT-7, and RHEL ARK kernels.

Details regarding recent fixes, features and enhancements can be found in:

  http://people.redhat.com/anderson/crash.changelog.html


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

crash-7.2.3-18.el8


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