Re: [char-misc-next v2 7/7] watchdog: mei_wdt: re-register device on event

Guenter Roeck
2015-12-18T17:50:20Z

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