Provided by: watchdog_5.13-1_amd64 
NAME
watchdog - a software watchdog daemon
SYNOPSIS
watchdog [-F|--foreground] [-f|--force] [-c filename|--config-file filename]
[-v|--verbose] [-s|--sync] [-b|--softboot] [-q|--no-action]
DESCRIPTION
The Linux kernel can reset the system if serious problems are detected. This can be
implemented via special watchdog hardware, or via a slightly less reliable software-only
watchdog inside the kernel. Either way, there needs to be a daemon that tells the kernel
the system is working fine. If the daemon stops doing that, the system is reset.
watchdog is such a daemon. It opens /dev/watchdog, and keeps writing to it often enough to
keep the kernel from resetting, at least once per minute. Each write delays the reboot
time another minute. After a minute of inactivity the watchdog hardware will cause the
reset. In the case of the software watchdog the ability to reboot will depend on the state
of the machines and interrupts.
The watchdog daemon can be stopped without causing a reboot if the device /dev/watchdog is
closed correctly, unless your kernel is compiled with the CONFIG_WATCHDOG_NOWAYOUT option
enabled.
TESTS
The watchdog daemon does several tests to check the system status:
• Is the process table full?
• Is there enough free memory?
• Are some files accessible?
• Have some files changed within a given interval?
• Is the average work load too high?
• Has a file table overflow occurred?
• Is a process still running? The process is specified by a pid file.
• Do some IP addresses answer to ping?
• Do network interfaces receive traffic?
• Is the temperature too high? (Temperature data not always available.)
• Execute a user defined command to do arbitrary tests.
• Execute one or more test/repair commands found in /etc/watchdog.d. These commands are
called with the argument test or repair.
If any of these checks fail watchdog will cause a shutdown. Should any of these tests
except the user defined binary last longer than one minute the machine will be rebooted,
too.
OPTIONS
Available command line options are the following:
-v, --verbose
Set verbose mode. Only implemented if compiled with SYSLOG feature. This mode will
log each several infos in LOG_DAEMON with priority LOG_INFO. This is useful if you
want to see exactly what happened until the watchdog rebooted the system. Currently
it logs the temperature (if available), the load average, the change date of the
files it checks and how often it went to sleep.
-s, --sync
Try to synchronize the filesystem every time the process is awake. Note that the
system is rebooted if for any reason the synchronizing lasts longer than a minute.
-b, --softboot
Soft-boot the system if an error occurs during the main loop, e.g. if a given file
is not accessible via the stat(2) call. Note that this does not apply to the
opening of /dev/watchdog and /proc/loadavg, which are opened before the main loop
starts.
-F, --foreground
Run in foreground mode, useful for running under systemd (for example).
-f, --force
Force the usage of the interval given or the maximal load average given in the
config file.
-c config-file, --config-file config-file
Use config-file as the configuration file instead of the default
/etc/watchdog.conf.
-q, --no-action
Do not reboot or halt the machine. This is for testing purposes. All checks are
executed and the results are logged as usual, but no action is taken. Also your
hardware card or the kernel software watchdog driver is not enabled. Temperature
checking is also disabled since this triggers the hardware watchdog on some cards.
FUNCTION
After watchdog starts, it puts itself into the background and then tries all checks
specified in its configuration file in turn. Between each two tests it will write to the
kernel device to prevent a reset. After finishing all tests watchdog goes to sleep for
some time. The kernel drivers expects a write to the watchdog device every minute.
Otherwise the system will be reset. As a default watchdog will sleep for only 1 second so
it triggers the device early enough.
Under high system load watchdog might be swapped out of memory and may fail to make it
back in in time. Under these circumstances the Linux kernel will reset the machine. To
make sure you won't get unnecessary reboots make sure you have the variable realtime set
to yes in the configuration file watchdog.conf. This adds real time support to watchdog:
it will lock itself into memory and there should be no problem even under the highest of
loads.
On system running out of memory the kernel will try to free enough memory by killing
process. The watchdog daemon itself is exempted from this so-called out-of-memory killer.
Also you can specify a maximal allowed load average. Once this load average is reached the
system is rebooted. You may specify maximal load averages for 1 minute, 5 minutes or 15
minutes. The default values is to disable this test. Be careful not to set this parameter
too low. To set a value less then the predefined minimal value of 2, you have to use the
-f option.
You can also specify a minimal amount of virtual memory you want to have available as
free. As soon as more virtual memory is used action is taken by watchdog. Note, however,
that watchdog does not distinguish between different types of memory usage. It just checks
for free virtual memory.
If you have a watchdog card with temperature sensor you can specify the maximal allowed
temperature. Once this temperature is reached the system is halted. The default value is
120. There is no unit conversion so make sure you use the same unit as your hardware.
watchdog will issue warnings once the temperature increases 90%, 95% and 98% of this
temperature.
When using file mode watchdog will try to stat(2) the given files. Errors returned by stat
will not cause a reboot. For a reboot the stat call has to last at least one minute. This
may happen if the file is located on an NFS mounted filesystem. If your system relies on
an NFS mounted filesystem you might try this option. However, in such a case the sync
option may not work if the NFS server is not answering.
watchdog can read the pid from a pid file and see whether the process still exists. If
not, action is taken by watchdog. So you can for instance restart the server from your
repair-binary.
watchdog will try periodically to fork itself to see whether the process table is full.
This process will leave a zombie process until watchdog wakes up again and catches it;
this is harmless, don't worry about it.
In ping mode watchdog tries to ping the given IP addresses. These addresses do not have to
be a single machine. It is possible to ping to a broadcast address instead to see if at
least one machine in a subnet is still living.
Do not use this broadcast ping unless your MIS person a) knows about it and b) has given
you explicit permission to use it!
watchdog will send out three ping packages and wait up to <interval> seconds for the reply
with <interval> being the time it goes to sleep between two times triggering the watchdog
device. Thus a unreachable network will not cause a hard reset but a soft reboot.
You can also test passively for an unreachable network by just monitoring a given
interface for traffic. If no traffic arrives the network is considered unreachable causing
a soft reboot or action from the repair binary.
watchdog can run an external command for user-defined tests. A return code not equal 0
means an error occured and watchdog should react. If the external command is killed by an
uncaught signal this is considered an error by watchdog too. The command may take longer
than the time slice defined for the kernel device without a problem. However, error
messages are generated into the syslog facility. If you have enabled softboot on error the
machine will be rebooted if the binary doesn't exit in half the time watchdog sleeps
between two tries triggering the kernel device.
If you specify a repair binary it will be started instead of shutting down the system. If
this binary is not able to fix the problem watchdog will still cause a reboot afterwards.
If the machine is halted an email is sent to notify a human that the machine is going
down. Starting with version 4.4 watchdog will also notify the human in charge if the
machine is rebooted.
SOFT REBOOT
A soft reboot (i.e. controlled shutdown and reboot) is initiated for every error that is
found. Since there might be no more processes available, watchdog does it all by himself.
That means:
1. Kill all processes with SIGTERM.
2. After a short pause kill all remaining processes with SIGKILL.
3. Record a shutdown entry in wtmp.
4. Save the random seed from /dev/urandom. If the device is non-existant or there is no
filename for saving this step is skipped.
5. Turn off accounting.
6. Turn off quota and swap.
7. Unmount all partitions except the root partition.
8. Remount the root partition read-only.
9. Shut down all network interfaces.
10. Finally reboot.
CHECK BINARY
If the return code of the check binary is not zero watchdog will assume an error and
reboot the system. Be careful with this if you are using the real-time properties of
watchdog since watchdog will wait for the return of this binary before proceeding. An
positive exit code is interpreted as an system error code (see errno.h for details).
Negative values are special to watchdog:
-1 Reboot the system. This is not exactly an error message but a command to watchdog.
If the return code is -1 watchdog will not try to run a shutdown script instead.
-2 Reset the system. This is not exactly an error message but a command to watchdog.
If the return code is -2 watchdog will simply refuse to write the kernel device
again.
-3 Maximum load average exceeded.
-4 The temperature inside is too high.
-5 /proc/loadavg contains no (or not enough) data.
-6 The given file was not changed in the given interval.
-7 /proc/meminfo contains invalid data.
-8 Child process was killed by a signal.
-9 Child process did not return in time.
-10 Free for personal use.
REPAIR BINARY
The repair binary is started with one parameter: the error number that caused watchdog to
initiate the boot process. After trying to repair the system the binary should exit with 0
if the system was successfully repaired and thus there is no need to boot anymore. A
return value not equal 0 tells watchdog to reboot. The return code of the repair binary
should be the error number of the error causing watchdog to reboot. Be careful with this
if you are using the real-time properties since watchdog will wait for the return of this
binary before proceeding.
TEST DIRECTORY
Executables placed in the test directory are discovered by watchdog on startup and are
automatically executed. They are bounded time-wise by the test-timeout directive in
watchdog.conf.
These executables are called with either "test" as the first argument (if a test is being
performed) or "repair" as the first argument (if a repair for a previously-failed "test"
operation on is being performed).
The as with test binaries and repair binaries, expected exit codes for a successful test
or repair operation is always zero.
If an executable's test operation fails, the same executable is automatically called with
the "repair" argument as well as the return code of the previously-failed test operation.
For example, if the following execution returns 42:
/etc/watchdog.d/my-test test
The watchdog daemon will attempt to repair the problem by calling:
/etc/watchdog.d/my-test repair 42
This enables administrators and application developers to make intelligent test/repair
commands. If the "repair" operation is not required (or is not likely to succeed), it is
important that the author of the command return a non-zero value so the machine will still
reboot as expected.
Note that the watchdog daemon may interpret and act upon any of the reserved return codes
noted in the Check Binary section prior to calling a given command in "repair" mode.
BUGS
None known so far.
AUTHORS
The original code is an example written by Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, the author
of the kernel driver. All additions were written by Michael Meskes <meskes@debian.org>.
Johnie Ingram <johnie@netgod.net> had the idea of testing the load average. He also took
over the Debian specific work. Dave Cinege <dcinege@psychosis.com> brought up some
hardware watchdog issues and helped testing this stuff.
FILES
/dev/watchdog
The watchdog device.
/var/run/watchdog.pid
The pid file of the running watchdog.
SEE ALSO
watchdog.conf(5)