Talk:HOWTO Watchdog Timer
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Gee, I like this WIKI stuff. Makes my stuff look sooo official. We need more Gentoo dedicated servers!! Hope This Helps. - author petlab
[edit] Software watchdog
How about some tips on installing and configuring a software-only watchdog?
Done. -- Bluec
There is a minor bug in the watchdog
package which will cause problems if it has a run-level of boot (that is you use the following rc-update add watchdog boot)
Watchdog on my system is configured to test that syslog-ng and apache2 are running using the following two lines
pidfile = /var/run/syslog-ng.pid
pidfile = /var/run/apache2.pid
A nasty problem occurs if you set watchdog to have a run-level of boot. The initscript has a dependency of logger, so watchdog is scheduled to start after syslog. However it starts before apache2, discovers that apache2 is not running and reboots.
The system is stuck in a reboot loop.
It is necessary to change the initscript to add depencies for any systems whose pidfiles will be tested. Since most of these will be operate with a run-level of default, watchdog should also have a run-level of default.
