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>
6ffc787a44