[Voyage-linux] Re: Broken watchdog?

[Thomas Mueller]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:11:52 +0100, Robert Rawlins wrote:  
> My watchdog doesn't appear to be working quite correctly and I'm hoping
> you can help me out. I have it watching a process for me to ensure its
> still alive and I can see it logging this check in syslog like so:
> 
> 
>  
> Sep 10 08:50:11 voyage watchdog[3351]: still alive after 5661
> interval(s)
> 
> Sep 10 08:50:11 voyage watchdog[3351]: was able to ping process 3250
> (/var/run/myapp.pid).
> 
> Sep 10 08:50:26 voyage watchdog[3351]: still alive after 5662
> interval(s)
> 
> Sep 10 08:50:26 voyage watchdog[3351]: pinging process 3250
> (/var/run/myapp.pid) gave errno = 3 = 'No such process'
> 
> 
>  
> As you can see, it knows it cannot ping my process as it has crashed,
> yet the system doesn't appear to reboot itself. It just sits there like
> a dead duck J

i've stumbled upon the same "problem". I "fixed" this with loading the 
geodewdt module with "nowayout=1" option (place "option geodewdt 
nowayout=1"  in /etc/modprobe.d/options) . 

never used watchdog before the ALIX boards, but maybe it needs the 
"repair-binary" option set to a real binary. it seems that the default 
is /usr/sbin/repair which doesn't exist.

also check that /etc/default/watchdog doesn't contain "--no-action"

- Thomas

PS: replace geodewdt with your watchdog kernel module name