From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from bh-25.webhostbox.net ([208.91.199.152]:36948 "EHLO bh-25.webhostbox.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752459AbbLRRuT (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:50:19 -0500 Subject: Re: [char-misc-next v2 7/7] watchdog: mei_wdt: re-register device on event To: One Thousand Gnomes References: <1450363780-30008-1-git-send-email-tomas.winkler@intel.com> <1450363780-30008-8-git-send-email-tomas.winkler@intel.com> <56743CD9.3000708@roeck-us.net> <20151218171939.57bf5621@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Cc: Tomas Winkler , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Wim Van Sebroeck , Alexander Usyskin , linux-watchdog@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Guenter Roeck Message-ID: <56744757.2060101@roeck-us.net> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 09:50:15 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20151218171939.57bf5621@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-watchdog-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-watchdog@vger.kernel.org On 12/18/2015 09:19 AM, One Thousand Gnomes wrote: >> I am not really happy about the watchdog device appearing and disappearing >> dynamically. This wreaks havoc with any standard watchdog application. > > Any software that doesn't handle this has been broken for over fifteen > years. We have hotplug PCI and we have PCI watchdog card support. This > isn't a new behaviour to anyone outside the embedded single board space. > >> Isn't there a better way to handle this ? How about just registering the >> watchdog device and return an error in the access functions if it is disabled ? > > That breaks the existing behaviour of hot pluggable watchdog interfaces > and is different to just about any other device in the kernel. Today with > any desktop or server distribution you can already trivially arrange for > watchdog daemons to start at the point a watchdog is detected dynamically. > Ok, you have a point. Wonder if any distributions are doing that, though. Any idea ? Guenter