Re: [PATCH] Document x86-64 iommu kernel parameters

[Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>]

On Wednesday 03 October 2007 18:58, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> On 10/03/2007 12:10 AM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Randy Dunlap wrote:
> >> Maybe we can/should merge the doc files along with the x86 arch merge.
> >
> > Well, the x86 merge is pretty much mechanical.  It should be followed up
> > with a lot of manual merging.
>
> It would be really nice if identical kernel parameters used the same names,
> so people didn't waste their time trying e.g. "nolapic_timer" on x86_64
> because that option fixed their problems on i386 (it's "noapictimer" in
> x86_64.)

Well the x86-64 option was there first; you have to ask whoever
added the i386 option why they used a different name

But I normally added aliases as people reported them. Nobody did in 
this case.

One reason is probably that noapictimer is not very useful on x86-64 --
the nolapic_timer is really more a workaround that only started making
sense on HRT because it made "apicmaintimer" default. 
On current x86-64 which doesn't do that there is very little reason to use it
and you'll usually just break things.

So I guess the real reason is that they're not actually identical
when you look closely.

-Andi