Re: [PATCH] NMI watchdog config option (was: Re: [PATCH] NMI lockupand AltSysRq-P dumping calltraces on _all_ cpus via NMI IPI)

From: Kirill Korotaev
Date: Tue May 17 2005 - 06:21:51 EST


Kirill Korotaev <dev@xxxxx> wrote:

BTW, why NMI watchdog is disabled by default?


There was a significantly large string of reports of dying PCs in the
2.4.early timeframe. These machines would mysteriously lock up after
considerable periods of time and the problem was cured by disabling the NMI
watchdog. Nobody was ever able to solve it, so we changed it to default to
off.
Hmm, it is strange, since we used 2.4 kernels with watchdog for years (starting from 2.4.1)...

So much has changed in there that we might have fixed it by accident, and I
do recall a couple of fundamental and subtle NMI bugs being fixed. So
yeah, it might be worth enabling it by default again. Care to send a patch
which does that?
I attached the patch which turns NMI watchdog on by default on i386.

Signed-Off-By: Pavel Emelianov <xemul@xxxxx>

Kirill --- linux-2.6.12-rc4/arch/i386/kernel/nmi.c.nmiwd 2005-05-07 09:20:31.000000000 +0400
+++ linux-2.6.12-rc4/arch/i386/kernel/nmi.c 2005-05-17 13:47:38.000000000 +0400
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@

#include "mach_traps.h"

-unsigned int nmi_watchdog = NMI_NONE;
+unsigned int nmi_watchdog = NMI_IO_APIC;
extern int unknown_nmi_panic;
static unsigned int nmi_hz = HZ;
static unsigned int nmi_perfctr_msr; /* the MSR to reset in NMI handler */