From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752261Ab0LVVeG (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:34:06 -0500 Received: from palinux.external.hp.com ([192.25.206.14]:40009 "EHLO mail.parisc-linux.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752040Ab0LVVeF (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:34:05 -0500 Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:34:03 -0700 From: Matthew Wilcox To: Frank Rowand Cc: Thomas Gleixner , Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Prevent users from disabling tickless Message-ID: <20101222213403.GP1263@parisc-linux.org> References: <20101221233942.GL1263@parisc-linux.org> <4D1266F5.8040702@am.sony.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4D1266F5.8040702@am.sony.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 01:00:37PM -0800, Frank Rowand wrote: > Why remove the ability to make the configuration choice? Why not > just add the info about performance impact to the help text and > let me shoot myself in the foot (that is the unix way (tm)) if > I desire to? $ wc -l .config 2601 .config It's too hard to get every single config option right ... unless it's a works / doesn't work choice, having a "make my performance suck" config option is a bad idea. I didn't even know I had this config option set the wrong way until I ran powertop on my desktop, implemented its recommendations for things I'd screwed up in my .config, then reran the tests I was doing. Someone with a big server might not run powertop, so wouldn't be told they'd got it run. Sure, we could write a special tool to check peoples config options to see if they've got some common config options set wrongly ... but I'm rather reminded of Brazil. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/50/109556460_5362c5f2b5_o.jpg -- Matthew Wilcox Intel Open Source Technology Centre "Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this operating system, but compare it to ours. We can't possibly take such a retrograde step."