Virtual Machine Crash File Generation Techniques

• US 20110246986A1
• Filed: 03/31/2010
• Published: 10/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Yampell, Rich, Oshins, Jacob, Vega, Rene Antonio, Nicholas, Andrew
• Granted Patent: US 8,671,405 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0778 Dumping, i.e. gathering error/state information after a fault for later diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0787 Storage of error reports, e.g. persistent data storage, storage using memory protection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45579 I/O management, e.g. providing access to device drivers or storage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45545 Guest-host, i.e. hypervisor is an application program itself, e.g. VirtualBox
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

Techniques for creating crash data in a virtualized environment are disclosed. In an embodiment of the present disclosure the techniques can be used when a guest operating system within a virtual machine may not have a sufficient mechanism for generating crash data.

Claims

1. A computer system, comprising:

circuitry for configuring a hypervisor to obtain crash data for a guest operating system configured to execute in a virtual machine in response to detecting that the guest operating system crashed; and

circuitry for configuring the hypervisor to send the crash data to the virtual machine after the guest operating system is in control of the virtual machine.

2. The computer system of claim 1, further comprising:

circuitry for configuring the virtual machine to send debug metadata associated with the guest operating system to the hypervisor.

3. The computer system of claim 1, further comprising:

circuitry for collocating the crash data with saved state information for the virtual machine.

4. The computer system of claim 1, further comprising:

circuitry for disabling an encryption filter of an input/output driver configured to obtain the crash data.

5. The computer system of claim 1, further comprising:

circuitry for receiving crash data from an IO controller driver via a monolithic inter-partition communication bus, wherein the IO controller driver includes the monolithic inter-partition communication bus.

6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry for configuring the

hypervisor to obtain the crash data further comprises:

circuitry for accessing, by the hypervisor, guest physical addresses of the virtual machine and generating the crash data.

7. The computer system of claim 1, further comprising:

circuitry for storing information from the page file in the crash data.

8. The computer system 1, further comprising

circuitry for executing an input/output emulator in the virtual machine, wherein an input/output driver is configured to write the crash data to the input/output emulator.

9. A computer method, comprising:

configuring an input/output controller emulator to execute in a virtual machine in response to detecting that a guest operating system crashed;

receiving, by the input/output controller emulator, crash data for the guest operating system from information stored in the guest resources of the virtual machine;

storing, by a hypervisor, the crash data for the guest operating system.

10. The computer method of claim 9, further comprising:

injecting the input/output controller emulator into the guest resources of the virtual machine in response to detecting that the guest operating system crashed.

11. The computer method of claim 9, further comprising:

storing a page file for the guest operating system.

12. The computer method of claim 9, further comprising:

configuring boot firmware to load the input/output controller emulator into the guest resources of the virtual machine at boot-time for the guest operating system.

13. The computer method of claim 9, wherein the input/output controller emulator is

an IDE controller emulator.

14. The computer method of claim 9, wherein the input/output controller emulator is

a backplane based controller emulator.

15. The computer method of claim 9, further comprising:

sending, by a monolithic inter-partition communication bus executing in the virtual machine, the crash data to the hypervisor.

16. The computer method of claim 9, further comprising:

attaching a virtual disk with the crash data to the guest operating system after the guest operating system is in control of the virtual machine.

17. The computer system of claim 9, wherein storing the crash data further comprises:

storing the crash data in a predetermined location on a boot disk for the guest operating system, wherein the boot disk is mounted by the hypervisor.

18. A computer readable storage medium including executable instructions, the

computer readable storage medium comprising:

instructions for mounting a disk in a hypervisor in response to starting a guest operating system that previously crashed, wherein the disk includes a guest operating system configured to execute in a virtual machine; and

instructions for writing, by the hypervisor, crash data for the guest operating system to a predetermined location on the disk, wherein the crash data includes information obtained from at least guest physical addresses of the virtual machine.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 18, further comprising:

instructions for storing debug information associated with the guest operating system at crash in the crash data.

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 18, further comprising:

instructions for storing information from a page file in the crash data.