Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default

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From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Monday, March 5, 2007 - 1:40 pm

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Ingo Molnar wrote:

I really don't see the point of having NMI on by default. Debugging that 
can cause problems should be disabled. I thought we disabled this a long 
time ago -  but anyway, now it *really* is (ie I applied your patch).

Anybody who thinks that debugging code is always good is deluded. 
Debugging is only good if it has zero downsides and doesn't introduce 
problems of its own. And the NMI watchdog clearly isn't in that camp.

If you *actively* debug stuff and/or have actually seen lockups, use the 
NMI watchdog. But last I saw, if the machine was running X, the NMI 
watchdog wouldn't help *anyway*, so enabling it by default

 - has almost zero upsides in the wild _anyway_

 - clearly has risks.

so this was a no-brainer. I don't understand why it's even discussed, or 
why I hadn't gotten the patch the last time this was discussed.

		Linus
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Messages in current thread:
[patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Ingo Molnar, (Mon Mar 5, 5:20 am)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Arjan van de Ven, (Mon Mar 5, 7:49 am)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Len Brown, (Mon Mar 5, 10:42 am)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Andi Kleen, (Mon Mar 5, 12:54 pm)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Ingo Molnar, (Mon Mar 5, 1:26 pm)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Linus Torvalds, (Mon Mar 5, 1:40 pm)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Roland Dreier, (Tue Mar 6, 8:06 pm)
Re: [patch] disable NMI watchdog by default, Andi Kleen, (Wed Mar 7, 7:56 am)