linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v8 08/14] nohz_full: allow disabling the 1Hz minimum tick at boot

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Message-ID: <20151020210331.GC29289@lerouge>
Date:	Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:03:33 +0200
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@...hip.com>
Cc:	Gilad Ben Yossef <giladb@...hip.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
	Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@...aro.org>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 08/14] nohz_full: allow disabling the 1Hz minimum tick
 at boot

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 04:36:06PM -0400, Chris Metcalf wrote:
> While the current fallback to 1-second tick is still required for
> a number of kernel accounting tasks (e.g. vruntime, load balancing
> data, and load accounting), it's useful to be able to disable it
> for testing purposes.  Paul McKenney observed that if we provide
> a mode where the 1Hz fallback timer is removed, this will provide
> an environment where new code that relies on that tick will get
> punished, and we won't forgive such assumptions silently.
> 
> This option also allows easy testing of nohz_full and task-isolation
> modes to determine what functionality needs to be implemented,
> and what possibly-spurious timer interrupts are scheduled when
> the basic 1Hz tick has been turned off.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@...hip.com>

There have been proposals to disable/tune the 1 Hz tick via debugfs which
I Nacked because once you give such an opportunity to the users, they
will use that hack and never fix the real underlying issue.

For the same reasons, I'm sorry but I have to Nack this proposal as well.

If this is for development or testing purpose, scheduler_max_tick_deferment() is
easily commented out.
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