kprobes on by default in 2.6.20.1 kernel.org kernels

[Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 04:24:14PM -0700, Nathan DeBardeleben wrote:
> I just wanted to probe (har har) to see if you guys knew why kprobes is 
> set to "Y" (in the kernel) by default on the latest 2.6.20.1 kernel I 
> got from kernel.org.  I don't consider this a great move and am a little 
> worried about it.  For one thing, I know now we'll actively make certain 
> it's off in all future kernels we build that are intended for production 
> machines.
> 
> I grabbed the latest kernel to do some kprobes testing, went to 
> configure it to turn probing on and was very surprised to find it on by 
> default.

Kprobes has been enabled by default since 2.6.19 on i386. x86_64 has had
it on by default for a long while now.

> What's the process that the kernel maintainers go through to determine 
> which options are on by default anyway?

I am not aware of any process as such, but its mostly a decision taken
based on whether or not the feature is useful or not for the general
populace.

Ananth