Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/3] Add mcelog support for xen platform

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed Apr 25 2012 - 04:11:50 EST



* Andi Kleen <andi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Because, if you'd hooked into it, just imagine one fine day, when we
> > remove mcelog support, what screaming the xen people will be doing when
> > mcelog doesn't work anymore.
>
> That's simple. /dev/mcelog is a widely used user space ABI
> [...]

*COUGH* *SPLUTTER* *LAUGH*.

Thanks for making my day with the self-serving exaggeration of
the year.

In truth /dev/mcelog is one of the crappiest ABIs Linux has -
full stop. As a result it's barely used by anyone who can avoid
it - its main usecase is the utility you wrote for it and some
enterprise folks who desperately need that data and don't care
how they get it. The mcelog user-space utility sucks too,
understandably.

Nevertheless we probably have to keep the ABI around until a
truly better replacement is out there (the RAS daemon for
example) and mcelog usage eclipses to obscurity, but by all
means we want to limit its further spreading /dev/mcelog to
areas it has not polluted yet ...

Thanks,

Ingo
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