6.3-p5 watchdog timer not being disabled

[Patrick Lamaizière]

Le Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:07:06 -0400,
Stephen Clark <sclark46 at earthlink.net> a écrit :

> Hello List,
> 
> We have 2 different platforms that we are trying to use the watchdog
> timer and watchdogd program on. One is a Soekris 5501:
> CPU: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS (433.25-MHz 586-class
> CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD"  Id = 0x5a2  Stepping = 2
>    Features=0x88a93d<FPU,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,CX8,SEP,PGE,CMOV,CLFLUSH,MMX>
>    AMD Features=0xc0400000<MMX+,3DNow!+,3DNow!>

> The other is a:
> CPU: VIA C3 Nehemiah+RNG (1002.28-MHz 686-class CPU)
>    Origin = "CentaurHauls"  Id = 0x694  Stepping = 4
>    Features=0x380b03d<FPU,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MTRR,PGE,CMOV,MMX,FXSR,SSE>
> 
> According to the manpage on watchdogd if is killed with either SIGTERM
> or SIGINT it is suppose to disable the watchdog timer in the kernel so
> the system won't reboot.
> 
> On both of the above platforms this does not work and the platforms
> reboot when watchdogd is killed with a kill pid,
> after the timeout value (-t) that had been specified to watchdogd
> when starting it has elapsed.
> t
> Am I misunderstanding how this is suppose to work?

No, i have tested on my net5501 on freebsd-current. It works.

Can you try with watchdog -d -t <time> followed by a watchdog -t 0 to
disable the watchdog ?

There is a problem on the net5501 when you disable and then re-enable
the watchdog after the timer has elapsed: the box reboots immediatly.
But you can disable the timer.

Regards.