[Crash-utility] ANN: crash extension for networking stuff

[Alex Sidorenko]

Prebuilt extension modules released for x86 and x86_64 architectures today.

You can download them from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pykdump/, two 
packages of interest are

mpykdump-x86 (0.5.1)
mpykdump-x86_64 (0.5.1)

They can be used immediately on any x86 or x86_64 Linux distribution with 
GLIBC 2.3 or later (e.g. RHEL3-5, SLES9-11, Ubuntu etc.)

The extension provides 'xportshow' command with many options. In particular, 
it can produce output similar to 'netstat' with different options, print 
routing tables, ARP-tables, statistics, interface information and so on.
Most functions work on all kernels in 2.4.21-2.6.24 range. Please see examples 
at

http://pykdump.wiki.sourceforge.net/xportshow

The extension is built using PyKdump framework (Python scripting for crash) 
but it does not need Python installed. Everything needed to run is present in 
a single file that depends only on GLIBC-family libraries.

The source packages on SF site are very old; if you are interested in sources 
and/or building your own extensions, you can use the 'testing' branch of SVN. 
The build instructions can be found in projects Wiki,

http://pykdump.wiki.sourceforge.net/

The performance of PyKdump is on par with SIAL (PyKdump is much faster for 
data manipulation, SIAL is faster for dump structures access). In general I 
find SIAL great for simple scripts and PyKdump for bigger projects (e.g. 
automated 1st pass dumpanalysis running many tests).

The choice of functionality was driven by practical needs while working on 
problems for HP Linux support (x86, x86_64 and ia64); additional functions 
will be added as needed.

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Alexandre Sidorenko             email: asid at hp.com
Global Solutions Engineering:   Unix Networking
Hewlett-Packard (Canada)
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