kernel panics at google

[Riley Williams]

Hi Peter.

 > By the way, if you set /proc/sys/kernel/panic to a nonzero value
 > (it's a seconds count) panics will reboot the machine after N
 > seconds. Unfortunately it's a dirty reboot, but it's helluva lot
 > better than a hang for a production server.

I have to admit that I wasn't aware of this, but then, so many of the
files in /proc are best described as "Mysterious Magic" in that even
the units the values are specified in are not obvious.

Based on what I've seen recently, what is wrong with the idea of
having /proc files specifying a single value measured in some unit
actually state the unit when it's read, along the lines of...

 Q> # cat /proc/sys/kernel/panic
 Q> 0 seconds
 Q> # echo 90 > /proc/sys/kernel/panic
 Q> # cat /proc/sys/kernel/panic
 Q> 90 seconds
 Q> #

I appreciate that any programs making use of these files would need to
be checked to see if they work with the new format, but other than
that, are there any problems with doing this?

Best wishes from Riley.

 * Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
 * All rights and wrongs reserved.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux  |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch.   |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 * http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/


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