| Last Reviewed: 10/05/2007 |
| WDT Watchdog Timer Interfaces For The Linux Operating System |
| Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> |
| ICS WDT501-P (no fan tachometer) |
| All the interfaces provide /dev/watchdog, which when open must be written |
| to within a timeout or the machine will reboot. Each write delays the reboot |
| time another timeout. In the case of the software watchdog the ability to |
| reboot will depend on the state of the machines and interrupts. The hardware |
| boards physically pull the machine down off their own onboard timers and |
| will reboot from almost anything. |
| A second temperature monitoring interface is available on the WDT501P cards |
| This provides /dev/temperature. This is the machine internal temperature in |
| degrees Fahrenheit. Each read returns a single byte giving the temperature. |
| The third interface logs kernel messages on additional alert events. |
| The wdt card cannot be safely probed for. Instead you need to pass |
| wdt=ioaddr,irq as a boot parameter - eg "wdt=0x240,11". |
| The external event interfaces on the WDT boards are not currently supported. |
| Minor numbers are however allocated for it. |
| Example Watchdog Driver: see Documentation/watchdog/src/watchdog-simple.c |