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From: Oleksij Rempel <o.rempel@pengutronix.de>
To: "Tomaž Šolc" <tomaz.solc@klevio.com>, barebox@lists.infradead.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] Documentation: add watchdog documentation
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 09:06:16 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <5a89d7ae-1416-e900-daf2-06c851281334@pengutronix.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d71ee75b-55e0-fd12-bbdf-647fd7fa57c1@klevio.com>



On 18.02.19 08:56, Tomaž Šolc wrote:
> On 18. 02. 19 08:12, Oleksij Rempel wrote:
>> +A watchdog is the last line of defense on misbehaving systems. Thus, proper
>> +hardware and watchdog design considerations should be made to be able to reduce
>> +the impact of failing systems in the field. In the best case, the bootloader
>> +should not touch it at all. No watchdog feeding should be done until
>> +application-critical software (or a userspace service manager such as
>> +'systemd') was started.
>> +
>> +In case the bootloader is responsible for watchdog activation, the system can
>> +be considered as failed by design.
> 
> I think this is too strongly worded and I would leave out this last sentence. It seems 
> arrogant for documentation to judge what is "failed by design" like this, without 
> considering any other requirements for a system.

Can you please provide an example of a requirement, which can't be considered as bad design.

> Such a "failed" watchdog is still better than no watchdog in many cases and sometimes it's 
> the only option, as the text in later paragraphs explains. The paragraph above already 
> recommends that in the ideal case the bootloader shouldn't touch the watchdog. I think 
> that is enough.
> 
> Also, as far as I know, the Linux kernel will feed the watchdog on a kernel timer during 
> boot and until a userspace process grabs /dev/watchdog. So based on this basically all 
> systems based on Linux are already a failed design.

Correct. The fact, it is enabled by default in kernel do not means, it was a good decision.

Kind regards,
Oleksij Rempel

-- 
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  reply	other threads:[~2019-02-18  8:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-02-18  7:12 Oleksij Rempel
2019-02-18  7:56 ` Tomaž Šolc
2019-02-18  8:06   ` Oleksij Rempel [this message]
2019-02-18  8:56     ` Tomaž Šolc
2019-02-18  9:23       ` Oleksij Rempel
2019-09-24  7:54 Oleksij Rempel
2019-09-25 10:09 ` Sascha Hauer

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