Patch "watchdog: don't run proc_watchdog_update if new value is same as old" has been added to the 4.4-stable tree

[<gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

    watchdog: don't run proc_watchdog_update if new value is same as old

to the 4.4-stable tree which can be found at:
    http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
     watchdog-don-t-run-proc_watchdog_update-if-new-value-is-same-as-old.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.4 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree,
please let <stable@vger.kernel.org> know about it.


>From a1ee1932aa6bea0bb074f5e3ced112664e4637ed Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Joshua Hunt <johunt@akamai.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:17:23 -0700
Subject: watchdog: don't run proc_watchdog_update if new value is same as old

From: Joshua Hunt <johunt@akamai.com>

commit a1ee1932aa6bea0bb074f5e3ced112664e4637ed upstream.

While working on a script to restore all sysctl params before a series of
tests I found that writing any value into the
/proc/sys/kernel/{nmi_watchdog,soft_watchdog,watchdog,watchdog_thresh}
causes them to call proc_watchdog_update().

  NMI watchdog: enabled on all CPUs, permanently consumes one hw-PMU counter.
  NMI watchdog: enabled on all CPUs, permanently consumes one hw-PMU counter.
  NMI watchdog: enabled on all CPUs, permanently consumes one hw-PMU counter.
  NMI watchdog: enabled on all CPUs, permanently consumes one hw-PMU counter.

There doesn't appear to be a reason for doing this work every time a write
occurs, so only do it when the values change.

Signed-off-by: Josh Hunt <johunt@akamai.com>
Acked-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Cc: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

---
 kernel/watchdog.c |    9 ++++++++-
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- a/kernel/watchdog.c
+++ b/kernel/watchdog.c
@@ -907,6 +907,9 @@ static int proc_watchdog_common(int whic
 		 * both lockup detectors are disabled if proc_watchdog_update()
 		 * returns an error.
 		 */
+		if (old == new)
+			goto out;
+
 		err = proc_watchdog_update();
 	}
 out:
@@ -951,7 +954,7 @@ int proc_soft_watchdog(struct ctl_table
 int proc_watchdog_thresh(struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 			 void __user *buffer, size_t *lenp, loff_t *ppos)
 {
-	int err, old;
+	int err, old, new;
 
 	get_online_cpus();
 	mutex_lock(&watchdog_proc_mutex);
@@ -971,6 +974,10 @@ int proc_watchdog_thresh(struct ctl_tabl
 	/*
 	 * Update the sample period. Restore on failure.
 	 */
+	new = ACCESS_ONCE(watchdog_thresh);
+	if (old == new)
+		goto out;
+
 	set_sample_period();
 	err = proc_watchdog_update();
 	if (err) {


Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from johunt@akamai.com are

queue-4.4/watchdog-don-t-run-proc_watchdog_update-if-new-value-is-same-as-old.patch