Bug 450329

Summary: rsyslog tries to be helpful and translate oopses, but actually destroys them instead
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Arjan van de Ven <arjan>
Component: rsyslogAssignee: Peter Vrabec <pvrabec>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 9CC: theinric
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
URL: http://www.kerneloops.org/raw.php?rawid=21070
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: 3.16.1-2.fc9 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-06-18 03:14:29 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Arjan van de Ven 2008-06-06 17:59:59 UTC 
Description of problem:

Fedora's rsyslog package seems to have been configured to "translate" oopses the
kernel spits out. Unfortunately this is totally misguided and in fact harmful.

1) The kernel, since 2.6.0 (but also in RH and Fedora's kernel since 2.4.7)
*already* does any and all needed translations.

2) rsyslog uses partial information to try to translate AGAIN. But it has less
information than the kernel has, so is doing a rather poor job.

3) the kernel tends to both give the raw AND the translated information, for the
cases where having access to both is essential in diagnosing the bugs.
Unfortunately, rsyslog then comes in and decides to translate *AGAIN* the data
that was essential to have in raw form, but does not retain the raw data.



Look at the attached URL for how silly this is; for diagnosing bugs like this we
NEED the EIP value, as well as the translation. Thankfully the kernel already
gives you both... but rsyslog removes the untranslated value by a
again-translated one.

PLEASE fix this in an updated package; this bug is hindering the diagnostics and
fixing of various kernel bugs.
Comment 1 Tomas Heinrich 2008-06-09 16:08:44 UTC 
Hi Arjan,

given the circumstances, it seems logical to change the default behaviour directly in 
the upstream package. I've proposed this change on the mailing list (http://
lists.adiscon.net/pipermail/rsyslog/2008-June/000846.html), you're welcome to comment.
Comment 2 Fedora Update System 2008-06-17 12:13:06 UTC 
rsyslog-3.16.1-2.fc9 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 9
Comment 3 Fedora Update System 2008-06-18 03:14:27 UTC 
rsyslog-3.16.1-2.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.