Re: [PATCH 7/15] misc: Make x86 doublefault handling optional

Ingo Molnar
2005-12-12T10:37:04Z

* Scott Garfinkle <scotteglist@gmail.com> wrote:

> I tend to agree with the spirit of Andi's comment -- disabling this
> will (I think) make the rare time when it happens into something
> impossible to debug without a new kernel and reproducing the problem.

in the past couple of years i saw double-faults at a rate of perhaps
once a year - and i frequently hack lowlevel glue code! So the
usefulness of this code in the field, and especially on an embedded
platforms, is extremely limited.

in fact, i've experienced triple-faults (== spontaneous reboots) to be
at least 10 times more frequent than double-faults! I.e. _if_ your
kernel (or hardware) is screwed up to the degree that it would
double-fault, it will much more likely also triple-fault.

IIRC we added the double-fault handler to debug the PAE code originally.
Now years down the road, making it configurable-out if EMBEDDED makes
lots of sense.

Ingo