[Crash-utility] [PATCH v2] Remove the VOID_PTR facilitator macro

[Dave Anderson]

----- Original Message -----
> ----- Original Message -----
> > I've been wondering about the intended use of this facilitator macro
> > for some time and concluded that it is plainly wrong. It should
> > take a pointer value from a buffer, but what is the use of a pointer
> > that pointed to something on the target machine?
> >
> > Since it cannot be meaningfully dereferenced on the host, the only
> > (arguable) advantage is the ability to do pointer arithmetics on the
> > variables. This second patch does the correct thing wherever pointer
> > arithmetics was done, making the actual calculations more explicit.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Petr Tesarik <ptesarik at suse.cz>
> 
> Everything *looks* correct -- but this patch doesn't fix anything, while
> having the capacity to break what works. The slab-related changes still
> concern me, at least until I test them.

As it turns out, I can't even test the slab changes, because I don't have
any more sample dumpfiles that go that far back to "pre-percpu" days.  That
being the case, I'm not going to change the parts that modify dump_slab(),
dump_slab_objects() and gather_slab_free_list().  Why bother?  It's 
essentially dead code, but if there are still any users of it out there, 
I'm not going to risk breaking it on them.  

So I'm afraid it's going to continue to offend your sensibilities -- sorry
about that...

On the other hand, the changes to vm_area_dump() and next_upage() certainly
look harmless enough.

Thanks,
  Dave

 
> BTW, in the future, when you post patches can you add them as attachments
> instead of inlining them?
> 
> Thanks,
> Dave