[PATCH] x86: Add abilty to enable/disable nmi watchdog from procfs (update)

Adds a new /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog call that will enable/disable the
nmi watchdog.

By entering a non-zero value here, a user can enable the nmi watchdog to
monitor the online cpus in the system.  By entering a zero value here, a
user can disable the nmi watchdog and free up a performance counter which
could then be utilized by the oprofile subsystem, otherwise oprofile may be
short a counter when in use.

Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index 99902ae6804e..7db71d6fba82 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -1124,11 +1124,15 @@ debugging information is displayed on console.
 NMI switch that most IA32 servers have fires unknown NMI up, for example.
 If a system hangs up, try pressing the NMI switch.
 
-[NOTE]
-   This function and oprofile share a NMI callback. Therefore this function
-   cannot be enabled when oprofile is activated.
-   And NMI watchdog will be disabled when the value in this file is set to
-   non-zero.
+nmi_watchdog
+------------
+
+Enables/Disables the NMI watchdog on x86 systems.  When the value is non-zero
+the NMI watchdog is enabled and will continuously test all online cpus to
+determine whether or not they are still functioning properly.
+
+Because the NMI watchdog shares registers with oprofile, by disabling the NMI
+watchdog, oprofile may have more registers to utilize.
 
 
 2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem