Where: /dev/pstore/... Date: March 2011 Kernel Version: 2.6.39 Contact: tony.luck@intel.com Description: Generic interface to platform dependent persistent storage. Platforms that provide a mechanism to preserve some data across system reboots can register with this driver to provide a generic interface to show records captured in the dying moments. In the case of a panic the last part of the console log is captured, but other interesting data can also be saved. # mount -t pstore -o kmsg_bytes=8000 - /dev/pstore $ ls -l /dev/pstore total 0 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 7896 Nov 30 15:38 dmesg-erst-1 Different users of this interface will result in different filename prefixes. Currently two are defined: "dmesg" - saved console log "mce" - architecture dependent data from fatal h/w error Once the information in a file has been read, removing the file will signal to the underlying persistent storage device that it can reclaim the space for later re-use. $ rm /dev/pstore/dmesg-erst-1 The expectation is that all files in /dev/pstore will be saved elsewhere and erased from persistent store soon after boot to free up space ready for the next catastrophe. The 'kmsg_bytes' mount option changes the target amount of data saved on each oops/panic. Pstore saves (possibly multiple) files based on the record size of the underlying persistent storage until at least this amount is reached. Default is 10 Kbytes. Pstore only supports one backend at a time. If multiple backends are available, the preferred backend may be set by passing the pstore.backend= argument to the kernel at boot time.