Re: [PATCH 1/3] clocksource: clean up clocksource_select

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Thu Jul 04 2013 - 06:27:31 EST


On Thu, 4 Jul 2013, Alex Shi wrote:
> > We need this check and it is completely unrelated to the problem
> > you're trying to solve.
> >
> > Assume the following:
> >
> > System boots with clocksource A and switches into highres mode.
> > Now clocksource B gets registered and B is not highres capable.
> >
> > clocksource_find_best() selects again A, but we have
> > clocksource=B on the kernel command line to override the kernel
> > decision.
> >
> > By removing the check, you install he non highres capable clocksource
> > B and kill the machine.
> >
>
> You'r right. my bad, Sorry!
>
> BTW, why we allow user override a second best clocksource? I mean user
> can override the tsc with hpet. because undetected unstable tsc?

The user can decide to override with clocksource=jiffies if he wants
for testing purposes. That wont switch into highres ever if done from
the kernel command line. Now we have a sysfs interface, so we need to
sanity check the user override against highres.

The override is quite useful to test hpet, pmtimer on a machine which
would always select TSC.

Thanks,

tglx
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