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Re: kprobes on by default in 2.6.20.1 kernel.org kernels
- From: Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli <ananth at in dot ibm dot com>
- To: Nathan DeBardeleben <ndebard at lanl dot gov>
- Cc: "systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com" <systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 05:57:02 +0530
- Subject: Re: kprobes on by default in 2.6.20.1 kernel.org kernels
- References: <45E60F1E.80302@lanl.gov>
- Reply-to: ananth at in dot ibm dot com
On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 04:24:14PM -0700, Nathan DeBardeleben wrote:
> I just wanted to probe (har har) to see if you guys knew why kprobes is
> set to "Y" (in the kernel) by default on the latest 2.6.20.1 kernel I
> got from kernel.org. I don't consider this a great move and am a little
> worried about it. For one thing, I know now we'll actively make certain
> it's off in all future kernels we build that are intended for production
> machines.
>
> I grabbed the latest kernel to do some kprobes testing, went to
> configure it to turn probing on and was very surprised to find it on by
> default.
Kprobes has been enabled by default since 2.6.19 on i386. x86_64 has had
it on by default for a long while now.
> What's the process that the kernel maintainers go through to determine
> which options are on by default anyway?
I am not aware of any process as such, but its mostly a decision taken
based on whether or not the feature is useful or not for the general
populace.
Ananth