Re: i810 watchdog troubles (solved, but...)
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004, Hendrik Fuss wrote:
> I've just installed sarge (testing) on a new Fujitsu-Siemens R610 Dual
> Xeon workstation, but it took me quite a while to find out why the
> machine would power cycle every two minutes *only* when running under a
> 2.6 kernel (kernel-image 2.6.6-1-686-smp). No problems with a 2.4
> kernel.
This is a severe hint of a terminally defective i810_tco module in the
2.6 kernel. It must *NOT* activate the watchdog, for whatever reason,
unless someone opens /dev/watchdog.
> Installing the watchdog package didn't help. In addition I had to edit
> the config file /etc/watchdog.conf and uncomment the line
> "watchdog-device". After that the system was stable.
Ok, here are the two possibilities I can think off:
1. Kernel bug
2. Someone did something as exteremly stupid as compiling the kernel
with "do not stop watchdog on close" enabled, AND some hideous
braidamaged program is opening stuff it should not touch with a footlong
pole in /dev.
> I still think there's something wrong with the way the watchdog driver
> and daemon work, though. Why does the timer get started even though
> there's no watchdog daemon writing to the /dev/watchdog device? I'm not
No, it is supposed to be started when something OPENS /dev/watchdog, and
it should shutdown the watchdog if /dev/watchdog is closed *unless* you
specifically compile the kernel otherwise, or give the module an specific
parameter.
> even sure the i8xx_tco module started the timer, though on startup it
> would print this message:
>
> i8xx TCO timer: initialized (0x1060). heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0)
nowayout=0 means it should shutdown the watchdog on close. You have
a kernel bug. Someone else reported the same problem here. You're the
third one, I think.
You should file a bug against the kernel image package, I guess.
For the record, I use i810_tco compiled statically in a 2.4 kernel, and
it works wonderfully.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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