Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [PATCH][RFC] Proposal for a new watchdog interface using sysfs | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Fri, 14 Feb 2003 08:48:17 -0500 |
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On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:58:17 MST, Matt Porter said:
> Yes, and on embedded SoC devices we have watchdog facilities sitting > on an internal chip bus. It would be nice to find access points in > a uniform place on any Linux system. i.e. PCI watchdog on my x86 desktop > is in the same place as the on-chip watchdog on my PPC44x system. > > IMHO, anything else would be a logical step backwards from accessing > /dev/watchdog across platforms.
I admit not having thoroughly read the source to check - is the userspace API for accessing all these chips fairly uniform and rational, so that a user program can be reasonably sure that if stat("/dev/watchdog") returns zero, that it knows how to deal with it? Or are they all sufficiently close to the "keep reloading a countdown timer from userspace, and if it ever doesn't get reloaded, kick the kernel in the seat of the pants" programming model? Of course, even a disagreement on the units of the timer could be bad - a seconds/milliseconds clash could result is a *real* fast lack-of-joy situation.. ;)
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