Enabling watchdog

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 07:16:28AM -0700, Doug Ambrisko wrote:
> rihad writes:
> | 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?
> 
> Nope, when you load the ipmi driver it provides a HW watchdog via ipmi
> and works with watchdogd.  Now if you want to know if your machines 
> rebooted due to the watchdog then check the ipmi sel for the watchdog 
> event.

I'm a bit confused at this point, Doug.  At what point did the OP state
he has IPMI support or IPMI cards in his system?

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |