Re: System locking: kernel-2.4.6pre3-xfs

[Keith Owens <kaos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:31:59 +0200, 
Simon Matter <simon.matter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>"Peter T. Breuer" schrieb:
>> succession. On one occasion I saw the crash, and it was the NMI
>> watchdog kicking in! It said that CPU 1 was locked. The trace was
>
>Maybe you have to change some settings in the BIOS Setup. Some
>'operating systems' need a watchdog to free them from showing
>a blue screen after some minutes or hours of operation :), but
>Linux does not need it usually and it's good to disable all
>those features in the setup (if they exist).

The NMI watchdog has nothing to do with the BIOS.  It is a feature of
Linux where we generate non maskable interrupts to catch disabled
spinloops inside the kernel.  With kdb compiled in and active, the NMI
watchdog is a very useful debugging aid.