Keith Owens [interview] announced the availablitiy of dumpfs, "a common API for all the RAS code that wants to save data during a kernel failure and to extract that RAS data on the next boot." RAS stands for "Reliability, Availability & Serviceability". The proposed API, currently at version 0.01, is proof of concept, and a work in progress. Keith explains:

"dumpfs-v0.01 handles mounting the dumpfs partitions, including reliable sharing with swap partitions and clearing the dumpfs partitions. I am working on the code that reads and writes dumpfs data from kernel space, it is incomplete and has not been tested yet. After dumpfs_kernel is working, dumpfs_user is trivial. The code is proof of concept, some sections of the API (including polled I/O and data compression) are not supported yet, and some of the code is ugly."

Read on for a short FAQ about the proposed common dump API, as well as the current complete documentation detailing what it is and how it works.