Kernel Dump

[Sue Howard]

Hi,

I find there are three states of kernel dump support currently.
1. ARM and PowerPC. 
Not supported yet.
2. I386, AMD64, Alpha. 
The dump file contains dump header plus the raw physical memory image.
The code in dump_machdep.c is almost same.
3. IA64, SPARC
The dump file has private header besides dump header and raw physical
memory image. The code is ready for importing a MI dump interface.

I want to understand what IA64 and SPARC are different than i386. What
is the private header is for? Is it tech problem or historic problem?
Is it possible to remove the private header in order to make IA64 and
SPARC share the dump code of i386?

In my understanding, it should be possible. Since /dev/mem should be a
physic memory image.

Howard