On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 10:31:59AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> Because in this particular case it does not appear to be so: the reason for
> the
> BIOS/firmware call appears to be to determine how we nmi_panic() after
> receiving
> an NMI that no other NMI handler handled: with a passive-aggressive "I don't
> know"
> panic message or with a slightly more informative panic message.
However much I like just ripping all that out, I think the ROM call
actually does that logging, or that is how I read things.
If you look at the original Changelog for that driver:
Hp is providing a Hardware WatchDog Timer driver that will only work with
the
specific HW Timer located in the HP ProLiant iLO 2 ASIC. The iLO 2 HW Timer
will generate a Non-maskable Interrupt (NMI) 9 seconds before physically
resetting the server, by removing power, so that the event can be logged to
the HP Integrated Management Log (IML), a Non-Volatile Random Access Memory
(NVRAM). The logging of the event is performed using the HP ProLiant ROM via
an Industry Standard access known as a BIOS Service Directory Entry.
