linux-stable/Documentation/sysctl
Ulrich Obergfell 195daf665a watchdog: enable the new user interface of the watchdog mechanism
With the current user interface of the watchdog mechanism it is only
possible to disable or enable both lockup detectors at the same time.
This series introduces new kernel parameters and changes the semantics of
some existing kernel parameters, so that the hard lockup detector and the
soft lockup detector can be disabled or enabled individually.  With this
series applied, the user interface is as follows.

- parameters in /proc/sys/kernel

  . soft_watchdog
    This is a new parameter to control and examine the run state of
    the soft lockup detector.

  . nmi_watchdog
    The semantics of this parameter have changed. It can now be used
    to control and examine the run state of the hard lockup detector.

  . watchdog
    This parameter is still available to control the run state of both
    lockup detectors at the same time. If this parameter is examined,
    it shows the logical OR of soft_watchdog and nmi_watchdog.

  . watchdog_thresh
    The semantics of this parameter are not affected by the patch.

- kernel command line parameters

  . nosoftlockup
    The semantics of this parameter have changed. It can now be used
    to disable the soft lockup detector at boot time.

  . nmi_watchdog=0 or nmi_watchdog=1
    Disable or enable the hard lockup detector at boot time. The patch
    introduces '=1' as a new option.

  . nowatchdog
    The semantics of this parameter are not affected by the patch. It
    is still available to disable both lockup detectors at boot time.

Also, remove the proc_dowatchdog() function which is no longer needed.

[dzickus@redhat.com: wrote changelog]
[dzickus@redhat.com: update documentation for kernel params and sysctl]
Signed-off-by: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-04-14 16:48:59 -07:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
abi.txt
fs.txt Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2012-08-01 10:26:23 -07:00
kernel.txt watchdog: enable the new user interface of the watchdog mechanism 2015-04-14 16:48:59 -07:00
net.txt net-timestamp: no-payload only sysctl 2015-02-02 18:46:51 -08:00
README
sunrpc.txt
vm.txt Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2015-02-11 18:23:28 -08:00

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)