linux/Documentation/sysctl
Aaron Tomlin ed235875e2 kernel/watchdog.c: print traces for all cpus on lockup detection
A 'softlockup' is defined as a bug that causes the kernel to loop in
kernel mode for more than a predefined period to time, without giving
other tasks a chance to run.

Currently, upon detection of this condition by the per-cpu watchdog
task, debug information (including a stack trace) is sent to the system
log.

On some occasions, we have observed that the "victim" rather than the
actual "culprit" (i.e.  the owner/holder of the contended resource) is
reported to the user.  Often this information has proven to be
insufficient to assist debugging efforts.

To avoid loss of useful debug information, for architectures which
support NMI, this patch makes it possible to improve soft lockup
reporting.  This is accomplished by issuing an NMI to each cpu to obtain
a stack trace.

If NMI is not supported we just revert back to the old method.  A sysctl
and boot-time parameter is available to toggle this feature.

[dzickus@redhat.com: add CONFIG_SMP in certain areas]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: additional CONFIG_SMP=n optimisations]
[mq@suse.cz: fix warning]
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>
Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Mateusz Guzik <mguzik@redhat.com>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Jan Moskyto Matejka <mq@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-23 16:47:44 -07:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
abi.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
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 kernel/watchdog.c: print traces for all cpus on lockup detection 2014-06-23 16:47:44 -07:00
net.txt qdisc: allow setting default queuing discipline 2013-08-31 00:32:32 -04:00
sunrpc.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
vm.txt mm, pcp: allow restoring percpu_pagelist_fraction default 2014-06-23 16:47:43 -07:00

README

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 :-)