[PATCH v3 2/2] mm/memblock: Add reserve_mem debugfs info

From: Guilherme G. Piccoli

Date: Wed Mar 18 2026 - 15:16:59 EST


When using the "reserve_mem" parameter, users aim at having an
area that (hopefully) persists across boots, so pstore infrastructure
(like ramoops module) can make use of that to save oops/ftrace logs,
for example.

There is no easy way to determine if this kernel parameter is properly
set though; the kernel doesn't show information about this memory in
memblock debugfs, neither in /proc/iomem nor dmesg. This is a relevant
information for tools like kdumpst[0], to determine if it's reliable
to use the reserved area as ramoops persistent storage; checking only
/proc/cmdline is not sufficient as it doesn't tell if the reservation
effectively succeeded or not.

Add here a new file under memblock debugfs showing properly set memory
reservations, with name and size as passed to "reserve_mem". Notice that
if no "reserve_mem=" is passed on command-line or if the reservation
attempts fail, the file is not created.

[0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kdumpst

Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sj@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli <gpiccoli@xxxxxxxxxx>

---

V3:
- Added header stub to avoid build failure (thanks Mike!).

- Refactored the debugfs creation routine to avoid too many
ifdefs, also changing (!(a || b)) to (!a && !b) in the function
(thanks SJ and Mike for the suggestions in this one!).

Notice that I've inverted the order of file creation, putting
physmem (and its ifdef) *before* - the reason for that is purely
because in my view, the code looks better this way, the ifdefs
are a bit more far from each other. I'm totally OK in changing
it, up yo you folks.

Cheers!


mm/memblock.c | 56 ++++++++++++++++---
tools/testing/memblock/linux/string_helpers.h | 10 ++++
2 files changed, 58 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 tools/testing/memblock/linux/string_helpers.h

diff --git a/mm/memblock.c b/mm/memblock.c
index ac08d7f8c15e..f4219f434ce5 100644
--- a/mm/memblock.c
+++ b/mm/memblock.c
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
#include <linux/seq_file.h>
#include <linux/memblock.h>
#include <linux/mutex.h>
+#include <linux/string_helpers.h>

#ifdef CONFIG_KEXEC_HANDOVER
#include <linux/libfdt.h>
@@ -2710,7 +2711,8 @@ static int __init reserve_mem(char *p)
}
__setup("reserve_mem=", reserve_mem);

-#if defined(CONFIG_DEBUG_FS) && defined(CONFIG_ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK)
+#ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_FS
+#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK
static const char * const flagname[] = {
[ilog2(MEMBLOCK_HOTPLUG)] = "HOTPLUG",
[ilog2(MEMBLOCK_MIRROR)] = "MIRROR",
@@ -2757,19 +2759,57 @@ static int memblock_debug_show(struct seq_file *m, void *private)
}
DEFINE_SHOW_ATTRIBUTE(memblock_debug);

-static int __init memblock_init_debugfs(void)
+static inline void memblock_debugfs_make_dirs(struct dentry *root)
{
- struct dentry *root = debugfs_create_dir("memblock", NULL);
-
- debugfs_create_file("memory", 0444, root,
- &memblock.memory, &memblock_debug_fops);
- debugfs_create_file("reserved", 0444, root,
- &memblock.reserved, &memblock_debug_fops);
#ifdef CONFIG_HAVE_MEMBLOCK_PHYS_MAP
debugfs_create_file("physmem", 0444, root, &physmem,
&memblock_debug_fops);
#endif
+ debugfs_create_file("memory", 0444, root,
+ &memblock.memory, &memblock_debug_fops);
+ debugfs_create_file("reserved", 0444, root,
+ &memblock.reserved, &memblock_debug_fops);
+}

+#else
+
+static inline void memblock_debugfs_make_dirs(struct dentry *root) { }
+
+#endif /* CONFIG_ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK */
+
+static int memblock_reserve_mem_show(struct seq_file *m, void *private)
+{
+ struct reserve_mem_table *map;
+ char txtsz[16];
+
+ for (int i = 0; i < reserved_mem_count; i++) {
+ map = &reserved_mem_table[i];
+ if (!map->size)
+ continue;
+
+ memset(txtsz, 0, sizeof(txtsz));
+ string_get_size(map->size, 1, STRING_UNITS_2, txtsz, sizeof(txtsz));
+ seq_printf(m, "%s\t\t(%s)\n", map->name, txtsz);
+ }
+
+ return 0;
+}
+DEFINE_SHOW_ATTRIBUTE(memblock_reserve_mem);
+
+static int __init memblock_init_debugfs(void)
+{
+ struct dentry *root;
+
+ if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK) && !reserved_mem_count)
+ return 0;
+
+ root = debugfs_create_dir("memblock", NULL);
+
+ if (reserved_mem_count)
+ debugfs_create_file("reserve_mem_param", 0444, root, NULL,
+ &memblock_reserve_mem_fops);
+
+ memblock_debugfs_make_dirs(root);
return 0;
}
__initcall(memblock_init_debugfs);
diff --git a/tools/testing/memblock/linux/string_helpers.h b/tools/testing/memblock/linux/string_helpers.h
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..dbf015cfff31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/testing/memblock/linux/string_helpers.h
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
+#ifndef _LINUX_STRING_HELPERS_H_
+#define _LINUX_STRING_HELPERS_H_
+
+/*
+ * Header stub to avoid test build breakage; we don't need to
+ * actually implement string_get_size() as it's not used in the tests.
+ */
+
+#endif
--
2.50.1