The VM event counters, enabled by CONFIG_VM_EVENT_COUNTERS, which provides
VM event counters in /proc/vmstat, has become more essential to
non-EMBEDDED kernel configurations than they were in the past. Comments in
the code and the Kconfig configuration explanation were stale, downplaying
their role excessively.
Refresh those comments to correctly reflect the current role of VM event
counters.
Signed-off-by: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
/*
* Light weight per cpu counter implementation.
*
- * Counters should only be incremented and no critical kernel component
- * should rely on the counter values.
+ * Counters should only be incremented. You need to set EMBEDDED
+ * to disable VM_EVENT_COUNTERS. Things like procps (vmstat,
+ * top, etc) use /proc/vmstat and depend on these counters.
*
* Counters are handled completely inline. On many platforms the code
* generated will simply be the increment of a global address.
default y
bool "Enable VM event counters for /proc/vmstat" if EMBEDDED
help
- VM event counters are only needed to for event counts to be
- shown. They have no function for the kernel itself. This
- option allows the disabling of the VM event counters.
- /proc/vmstat will only show page counts.
+ VM event counters are needed for event counts to be shown.
+ This option allows the disabling of the VM event counters
+ on EMBEDDED systems. /proc/vmstat will only show page counts
+ if VM event counters are disabled.
endmenu # General setup