From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Wolfram Sang Subject: CELF Project Proposal: Create a watchdog framework for the Linux kernel Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:02:15 +0100 Message-ID: <20091217230215.GC23944@pengutronix.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="DSayHWYpDlRfCAAQ" Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: celinux-dev@tree.celinuxforum.org, linux-embedded@vger.kernel.org --DSayHWYpDlRfCAAQ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Proposer: Wolfram Sang Summary: Create a watchdog framework for the Linux kernel Description: The watchdog API of the Linux kernel is documented and used for years. Yet, there is no abstraction for its common functionality (open, wri= te, ioctl, close), so every watchdog driver has to implement those methods on i= ts own. In addition to the vast amount of code duplication in the kernel sourc= e, this is also error-prone as there are subtle corner-cases in handling the watchdog and the userspace-input correctly. Although there is code review f= or new drivers, it seems very desirable to improve the situation as a whole. There have been two approaches for a generic watchdog framework, one from A= lan Cox and one from Wim van Sebroeck, the current watchdog maintainer. Sadly, nothing from those have made it to mainline so far. This is a bit surprisin= g; although watchdogs are usually rather simple devices, they are crucial for = the stability concept of an enormous number of devices. The benefit of this proposal is to have a rock-solid, well maintainable and trustworthy watchdog framework, which makes writing new drivers faster and less error-prone. Related work: * Proposal by Alan Cox: http://git.kernel.org/?p=3Dlinux/kernel/git/wim/linux-2.6-watchdog-= next.git;a=3Dshortlog;h=3Drefs/heads/alan-generic-watchdog * Proposal by Wim van Sebroeck: http://git.kernel.org/?p=3Dlinux/kernel/git/wim/linux-2.6-watchdog-= next.git;a=3Dshortlog;h=3Drefs/heads/wim-generic-watchdog Scope: My estimation would be 4 weeks of development and testing --=20 Pengutronix e.K. | Wolfram Sang | Industrial Linux Solutions | http://www.pengutronix.de/ | --DSayHWYpDlRfCAAQ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksquHcACgkQD27XaX1/VRuKCgCfQij4v7d8r5BuZGt+L9GgdcK2 A2sAoLKXUHsfVpl22YGCqmLOxOTdCHSj =W97t -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --DSayHWYpDlRfCAAQ--