I'm using RHEL 6 (kernel 2.6.32-131) and I'm trying to start oprofile, but I keep getting an error. My oprofile version is 0.9.6-12.

I was able to successfully do

opcontrol --init

But when I did a

opcontrol --start --no-vmlinux

I got the error

Using default event: CPU_CLK_UNHALTED:100000:0:1:1
Error: counter 0 not available nmi_watchdog using this resource ? Try:
opcontrol --deinit
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog

I don't know if it's safe for me to do this? For what I googled, it seems that nmi_watchdog is used to reboot the system if it hangs, and that sounds like something I want. Also,

grep NMI /proc/interrupts

shows a bunch of numbers, which I guess indicates that nmi_watchdog is already running?

How can I run both oprofile and nmi_watchdog?