From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.8]:57867 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753447Ab1FSLZo (ORCPT ); Sun, 19 Jun 2011 07:25:44 -0400 From: Arnd Bergmann To: Alan Cox Subject: Re: [PATCH 7/10 v2] Generic Watchdog Timer Driver Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:25:17 +0200 Cc: Wim Van Sebroeck , LKML , Linux Watchdog Mailing List References: <20110618172537.GH3441@infomag.iguana.be> <201106182107.45682.arnd@arndb.de> <20110619110328.39c0f5e1@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> In-Reply-To: <20110619110328.39c0f5e1@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201106191325.17181.arnd@arndb.de> Sender: linux-watchdog-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-watchdog@vger.kernel.org On Sunday 19 June 2011 12:03:28 Alan Cox wrote: > > > /* Register the watchdog timer device */ > > > res = watchdog_register_device(&wdt_dev); > > > > Why is this a feature of the individual drivers and not of the core? > > It's a hardware dependant feature - some watchdogs cannot be stopped once > initialized. Ah, I see. OTOH, 80 of the 107 watchdogs in the kernel do provide it as a module option, which indicates that there is some room for consolidation, even if it might not be appropriate for every one of them. > > Maybe it can be in both, so existing drivers don't need to change the user > > interface, but new drivers don't have to provide the option individually > > when you can simply set it for the base module. > > Then you'd need an additional interface to specify which watchdog as soon > as we support multiple watchdogs. You can always have multiple ways of setting nowayout -- hardware requirements, global module option, local module option, and a new ioctl command -- but what is being used is then the logical OR of all of them. Arnd