system timer: fix crash in <100Hz system timer
authorDavid Fries <david@fries.net>
Wed, 6 Feb 2008 09:38:04 +0000 (01:38 -0800)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>
Wed, 6 Feb 2008 18:41:10 +0000 (10:41 -0800)
commit6ffc787a4492ac627315aaeafdfdc0a5c3028582
treebb557076ead94695cd148c4b7b065d44e77e62a3
parent82f560874e88bd1fd8c98a6254d65a1dffab3876
system timer: fix crash in <100Hz system timer

The kernel has a divide by zero crash when trying to run the system timer
less than 100Hz.  The problem is x/(HZ/USER_HZ) and related.  Now
x*(USER_HZ/HZ) will be used if HZ<USER_HZ.

I'm running the Linux kernel under qemu and went to run a slower system
timer to take less CPU (and battery) on the host.  I found that the kernel
paniced under emulation because of a divide by zero in three places.  Here
is the patch.  The base git was updated today 01-05-2008.  I went for a
20Hz system time by adding config HZ_20 etc to kernel/Kconfig.hz.  With
this patch I verified the system timer by looking at /proc/interrupts.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: partially clean up the macro maze]
Signed-off-by: David Fries <david@fries.net>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
include/linux/acct.h
kernel/time.c