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

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
>
> > "exciting", and we've several times had code that does actually disable
> > interrupts for a long time - which may be exceedingly impolite, but then
> > the NMI watchdog makes it a fatal error rather than something that is just
> > a nuisanse.
> 
>  Well, this is actually not a problem with the watchdog itself.  And I'd 
> rather say it's doing us a favour (and a great job) finding these buggy 
> bits of code that keep interrupts off CPUs. ;-)

For a _developer_ yes.

For a user under X, who finds his machine locked up and not doing 
anything, no.

And this is _exactly_ why we don't enable it by default. Go wild on your 
own machines - I used to do it myself. But users are better off with 
working machines.

IOW, testing is good, but it's _not_ good if you test your users to 
destruction.  User testing should be limited (as far as humanly possible) 
to things that they can sanely report.

			Linus
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