Re: [PATCH] sky2: Use deferrable timer for watchdog

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Parag Warudkar wrote:

On Dec 20, 2007 2:22 PM, Kok, Auke [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

ok, that's just bad and if there's no user-defineable limit to the deferral I
definately don't like this change.

Can I safely assume that any irq will cause all deferred timers to run?

I think even other causes for wakeup like process related ones will
cause the CPU to go busy and run the timers.
This, coupled with the fact that no one is yet able to reach 0 wakeups
per second makes it pretty unlikely that deferrable timers will be
deferred indefinitely.

quoted

If this is the case then for e1000 this patch is still OK since the watchdog needs
to run (1) after a link up/down interrupt or (2) to update statistics. Those
statistics won't increase if there is no traffic of course...

I think it is reasonable for Network driver watchdogs to use a
deferrable timer - if the machine is 100% IDLE there is no one needing
the network to be up.

Please note tha being connected to a network does not only mean to send 
but also to receive.

Best regards,

 				Krzysztof Oledzki