Kernel Watchdog

[synss]

Hi,

I do not really understand what Kernel watchdogs are and if I need it or not. I am running linux on my laptop, by the way. So far, from what I could find, watchdogs may be used to help in case something goes wrong in the kernel but one needs some special hardware to use it. It looks like something useful for big workstations or servers but not for laptops. So I am inclined to think that I can skip it on my next kernel configuration. But maybe I missed the point, so any further information or pointers would be appreciated.
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[Hu]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchdog_timer for an explanation of what it can do. For a typical laptop or desktop system, the watchdog is not likely to be useful. If you were running experimental or otherwise unreliable code, the watchdog might be useful to recover the system if the test code gets out of control.

You can get a software watchdog if you want watchdog support and lack a hardware watchdog. Of course, a software watchdog is less reliable. If the system hangs hard, it will cease checking whether the watchdog is satisfied, and so the watchdog will never trigger. A hardware watchdog can recover anyway, since it continues to monitor even if the system CPU has locked up.

[synss]

Thank you. I'll go through the wikipedia article.
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