Date: 5 Aug 2003 23:19:10 +0200
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 23:19:10 +0200
From: Andi Kleen <ak@colin2.muc.de>
To: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>,
       Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Export touch_nmi_watchdog
Message-ID: <20030805211910.GE31598@colin2.muc.de>
References: <20030805203137.E30256@devserv.devel.redhat.com> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308051402300.2835-100000@home.osdl.org> <20030805211416.GD31598@colin2.muc.de> <20030805211554.B603@devserv.devel.redhat.com>
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On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 09:15:54PM +0000, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 11:14:16PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > Otherwise this will just keep on expanding. 
> > 
> > It does expand on i386 exactly because the watchdog is disabled by default.
> > 
> > Looks like a mistake to me. It should be on because having usable backtraces
> > on a deadlock/hang is useful enough that it outweights any other possible
> > disadvantages. That's especially true for kernels out there at user's boxes,
> > not just special debugging kernels run by developers.
> > 
> > [if there should be any hardware where it doesn't work it should be blacklisted
> > there]
> 
> the reason it's off is that certain IBM bioses corrupt the eax register on
> NMI's when they collide with smm stuff... You'd be surprised how
> tolerant x86 is against such corruptions... but not 100%  :)

That could be catched by a dmi_scan.c entry ?

-Andi

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