Hi Robert, On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > a quick question regarding debugging the currently-running kernel > with gdb. after compiling the kernel with debugging info and > rebooting, i started the debugger with: > > # gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore > > and, as a test, tried: > > (gdb) print jiffies > > what i got printed was a *negative* number, which struck me as odd -- > it was around -150000. it took only a few minutes for that to finally > click over zero and become positive but is there some reason that the > number of jiffies since boot time would display as negative, at least > temporarily? >From Understanding the Linux Kernel, 3rd edition, page 234, it says that jiffies is initialised to -300000. The jiffies variable overflow would then occur in 5 minutes since kernel boot time. It says this was intentional, so that buggy kernels could be spotted soon after booting. Regards, Srdjan -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
