watchdog: hw+sw?

[Won De Erick]

--- On Thu, 4/2/09, Andriy Gapon <avg at icyb.net.ua> wrote:
> 
> I have some vague thoughts on using SW_WATCHDOG and a
> hardware watchdog together.
> I think this could be useful but I am not sure how to
> implement this.
> The idea is this: timeout for SW_WATCHDOG is smaller than
> timeout for hw wd; when
> some freeze happens sw wd logic kicks in first, stops hw wd
> and produces either
> panic or ddb prompt; if the freeze is so severe that sw wd
> can't run (e.g.
> hardware is messed up badly) then hw wd performs its duty.
> I am mostly interested in having this in unattended mode
> where kernel dump could
> be useful for later analysis but the system should recover
> in reasonable time.
> 
> Suggestions, opinions?

That is interesting! I've been longing for that kind of tool that works with FreeBSD.

You might as well want to see/try how the 'bmc-panic'
mentioned in the following link is related to your project.

http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/

Good luck.