Dear Wolfram, In message <20111204125928.GB5788@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> you wrote: > > > This patch is a port from Linux 2.4 and thought as an RFC, so comments > > are greately appreciated. First question is, has this watchdog driver > > API a chance to go in mainline? If so, what is the direction to > > go to push it ... > > I don't see this flying. We finally have a watchdog framework in the kernel > which covers the long existing API used by existing drivers. If I understood it > right, this additional API needs new drivers for all the watchdogs? Also, I > didn't fully get what you are missing from the combination of the current API > and additional userspace-handling? (check [1] for one example, not really Watchdog support is somethign that usually comes into play for security-critical devices. Doing this stuff in user space may or may not be sufficient; for example, we've seen requirements where all related code must be running from ROM (including all other kernel code). Also, the implementation submitted by Heiko allows for easy watchdog control for kernel tasks. I don;t see a good way to do this through user space. But as Heikow wrote; this is a RFC patch, and the main purpose is to try to find out if it has a chance to go into mainline - several earlier attempts (which go back as far as 2002 - see for example [1], [2]) all failed with similar arguments like yours: "It's too complex, we already have watchdog support, nobody needs this". Funny enough that we have a number of customers who consider the existing wdt support unsufficient for their use cases. We've been using it on all kinds on PPC systems, and now on ARM as well. We will not fight for inclusion of this driver, we just wat to know if it's worth investing efforts to get it accepted or if this is a lost case. [1] http://osdir.com/ml/linux.ports.ppc.embedded/2003-12/msg00188.html [2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/884598 Best regards, Wolfgang Denk -- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@xxxxxxx Gewöhnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hört, es müsse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen. -- Goethe, Faust I -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-watchdog" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
