Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:29:57 -0500
From:      dennis <dennis@etinc.com>
To:        shimon@simon-shapiro.org
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: WatchDog Timer
Message-ID:  <3.0.32.19980217102956.00eb2940@etinc.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
At 02:23 PM 2/16/98 -0800, you wrote:
>
>On 16-Feb-98 Julian Elischer wrote:
>> eh?
>> what watchdog?
>> we have a hook that is called by the kernel
>> when it is doing long uninterrupted operations (e.g. dumping core)
>> but it's just a hook. The user needs to supply their own hardware
>> watchdog.. (and code to tickle it)
>> 
>> julian
>
>If there is no driver for such hardware today, I'll write it this week.
>This is really not the same as a kernel's internal watchdog.  What we are
>talking about here is used to build a dead-man switch;  In case of O/S
>catastrophic failure, this device will reboot the machine, or in the case
>of HA/FT, signal to the rest of the ``system'' that a Unix instance just
>died.
>
>I simply do not want to write a driver that was already written.
>What is the kernel's hook name/path?  Maybe we can merge the two, or at
>least relate to each other.  As in ``If the kernel is busy with a long,
>uninterrupted operation, we automatically mask off the dead-man switch''.

We have hardware that will do this, you need a physical device to hard reboot
the machine as software reboots are imperfect. We're in semi-production, but
dont really push it. 2 of our serial boards also have one integrated on them.

Dennis

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3.0.32.19980217102956.00eb2940>