During boot pstore and decompression failed messages are logged

This document (7023245) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

Dual or Multi-boot system

Situation

The server is used to boot two or more different SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versions of which at least one is SLE15 based. At some point when booting the SLES 15 server again the following messages are logged:

[    5.565708] pstore: using lzo compression
[    5.569762] pstore: Registered erst as persistent store backend
[    7.653453] pstore: lzo_decompress error, ret = -6!
[    7.658370] pstore: decompression failed: -5

Resolution

Check for and remove the following files:

/sys/fs/pstore/dmesg-erst*

Cause

The pstore ("persistent storage") driver is used to store the dmesg entries persistently to have this information available for analysis from right before a crash happens. The storage back-end here is APEI ERST (error record serialization table). With SLE15 the compression of the /sys/fs/pstore/dmesg*.z files changed from zlib to lzo which causes decompression errors of the old files (created when older SLEx versions were booted).

Additional Information

Currently with SLE15 the default and only supported compression for pstore is LZO.

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.