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Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 08:51:33 +0100 From: Simon Kagstrom <simon.kagstrom@...insight.net> To: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@...ana.be> Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, seth.heasley@...el.com Subject: Re: [PATCH] iTCO_wdt: Don't stop on shutdown with nowayout On Sun, 7 Mar 2010 16:16:56 +0100 Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@...ana.be> wrote: > > Currently, the watchdog is turned off when the system shuts down or the > > module is unloaded. If nowayout has been selected, this makes no sense > > and fails to restart the system if it hangs during reboot, so make it > > conditional. > > the nowayout option is there to make sure that the watchdog keeps running > as long as the system is running. If you however do a system shutdown (which > means that you are going to reboot your server in a controlled fasion and thus > not as result of a crash or hang-situation), then either the shutdown function > of your platform_driver or the reboot_notifier call will be executed. > In the case of a watchdog device idriver we will then stop the watchdog to > prevent reboot's during the fsck that might happen after reboot. > If you run into a reboot operation during an fsck then chances a very big that > after the reboot your system will again be rebooted during the next fsck. > To prevent this fsck-reboot-loop issue we turn of the watchdog when rebooting. At least on the system I run on, the watchdog is turned off by the reboot itself, so it won't trigger on the next start anyway. But from Padraigs mail earlier I understand that this isn't the case everywhere, so it's a valid concern. However, I still think it would be nice to have this option avaiable for those that need it. Perhaps some option like "noshutdown" to keep it running during reboots. > > We have a system which has such a hang, and therefore want the watchdog > > to be on until the bitter end. > > Hmm, the correct question here should be: why do we have a hang in a clean boot. > Do you have more info on what exactly happens? This might be an initialization problem. Sorry, I should have been more clear here: The system hangs during shutdown (for reboot), not during the next bootup (when it's turned off anyway). So what my patch was trying to protect for is a hang before restart. You are of course right - the core issue is the hang itself. The hang occurs very rarely, and I don't have a way to reproduce it. We've seen it on both an old 2.6.23 kernel and 2.6.31 (what we use currently). I've manually inspected all shutdown calls and reboot notifiers which gets called on reboot, but not seen any obvious places where the system can hang. I'm suspecting some interaction with an interrupt handler or similar, but I can't really tell. The patch I sent provides protection against this hang, and it's something we really need until we've found the real issue. Unfortunately, iTCO_wdt is the first driver the shutdown() call is made to, so the hang could be in any of the other shutdown() calls. I could perhaps also go with a solution where the watchdog was guaranteed to be turned off last right before reboot. // Simon -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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