Re: [RFC PATCH 12/23] kernel/watchdog: Introduce a struct for NMI watchdog operations

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 05:41:41PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 17:57:32 -0700
> > Ricardo Neri <ricardo.neri-calderon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > > Instead of exposing individual functions for the operations of the NMI
> > > watchdog, define a common interface that can be used across multiple
> > > implementations.
> > > 
> > > The struct nmi_watchdog_ops is defined for such operations. These initial
> > > definitions include the enable, disable, start, stop, and cleanup
> > > operations.
> > > 
> > > Only a single NMI watchdog can be used in the system. The operations of
> > > this NMI watchdog are accessed via the new variable nmi_wd_ops. This
> > > variable is set to point the operations of the first NMI watchdog that
> > > initializes successfully. Even though at this moment, the only available
> > > NMI watchdog is the perf-based hardlockup detector. More implementations
> > > can be added in the future.
> > 
> > Cool, this looks pretty nice at a quick glance. sparc and powerpc at
> > least have their own NMI watchdogs, it would be good to have those
> > converted as well.
> 
> Yeah, agreed, this looks like half a patch.

Though I'm not seeing the advantage of it. That kind of NMI watchdogs are
low level architecture details so having yet another 'ops' data structure
with a gazillion of callbacks, checks and indirections does not provide
value over the currently available weak stubs.

> > Is hpet a cross platform thing, or just x86? We should avoid
> > proliferation of files under kernel/ I think, so with these watchdog
> > driver structs then maybe implementations could go in drivers/ or
> > arch/
> 
> HPET is mostly an x86 thing (altough it can be found elsewhere), but the

On ia64 and I doubt that anyone wants to take on the task of underwater
welding it to Itanic.

> whole thing relies on the x86 NMI mechanism and is thus firmly arch/
> material (like the sparc and ppc thing).

Right. Trying to make this 'generic' is not really solving anything.

Thanks,

	tglx