Linux: Debugging with “git bisect”

“Following up to a bug report against the 2.6.22 kernel, Andrew
Morton and Linus Torvalds offered some tips on how to debug kernel
problems. Andrew first pointed to netconsole.txt for instructions
on setting up a netconsole, ‘when the machine has stalled, see if
you can get a task trace with ALT-SYSRQ-t. This will require
CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y and possibly setting ignore_loglevel on the
kernel boot command line.’

“Linus Torvalds suggested ‘git bisect’ as an alternative, ‘[it]
will take some time, but is really a lot easier’ He explains,
‘there’s almost 7000 commits in between 2.6.21 and 22, but that
still means that in about fourteen recompiles/reboots, ‘git bisect’
should tell us where your problem starts, which will hopefully make
it obvious what the problem is (or at least pinpoint it a
*lot*)…”

Complete
Story