Re: Linux 2.6.21-rc1

Thomas Gleixner
2007-02-21T17:02:40Z

On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 08:24 -0800, Daniel Walker wrote:
> > The most interesting core change may be the dyntick/nohz one, where timer
> > ticks will only happen when needed. It's been brewing for a _loong_ time,
> > but it's in the standard kernel now as an option.
>
> On i386 I get the following,
>
> TCP cubic registered
> NET: Registered protocol family 1
> NET: Registered protocol family 17
> Testing NMI watchdog ... CPU#0: NMI appears to be stuck (24->24)!
> CPU#1: NMI appears to be stuck (0->0)!
> CPU#2: NMI appears to be stuck (0->0)!
> CPU#3: NMI appears to be stuck (0->0)!
>
> when I add nmi_watchdog=1 to my boot args which worked on prior kernels.
> On closer inspection it looks like arch/i386/kernel/io_apic.c :
> check_timer() --> timer_irq_works() depends on IRQ0 incrementing jiffies
> which is no longer the case AFAIK.

At this point the PIT / HPET _is_ active and incrementing jiffies. The
switch to local apic timers happens afterwards.

> I'm not sure exactly how that relates to the NMI, but the check_timer()
> function disabled the NMI through the io-apic if it can't get the
> "timer" working through the io-apic.

Boot log please.

tglx