Enabling watchdog

[John Baldwin]

rihad wrote:
> On 05/14/2010 04:13 AM, Doug Ambrisko wrote:
>> rihad writes:
>> | Hi, I'm thinking of enabling the watchdog on our Dell PowerEdge 2950 /
>> | FreeBSD 8.0 amd64, so that it reboots the machine in case of lockups.
>> | Right now it doesn't work:
>> |
>> | # watchdog
>> | watchdog: patting the dog: Operation not supported
>> | #
>> | Looking through the kernel configuration I found two relevant settings:
>> | In /sys/conf/NOTES:
>> | #
>> | # Add software watchdog routines.
>> | #
>> | options SW_WATCHDOG
>> |
>> | and in /sys/amd64/conf/NOTES:
>> | #
>> | # Watchdog routines.
>> | #
>> | options MP_WATCHDOG
>> |
>> | Which of them should I rebuild the kernel with? BTW, the existing 
>> kernel
>> | is built with the default "options SCHED_ULE" to make good use of
>> | multiple CPUs, does watchdog work with it?
>>
>> If no one has said yet, kldload ipmi then run watchdogd.  ... or compile
>> it into the kernel.  This will enable the IPMI HW watchdog.  If it 
>> triggers,
>> it will appear in the IPMI SEL (ipmitool sel list).
>>
> Thanks. So did I understand it right that I should first install 
> sysutils/ipmitool, then start polling "ipmitool sel list" in a shell 
> script from a cron job run once a minute, and reboot in case IPMI 
> triggers? But if it's a kernel lockup, none of the user level code might 
> run at all. Any way to fall back to a hard and fast kernel level machine 
> reset?

No, watchdogd and the IPMI driver will manage the watchdog.  You can use 
'sel elist' after a reboot to see if the reboot was triggered via the 
watchdog.

-- 
John Baldwin