Linux Watchdog Daemon

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Overview of the Watchdog Daemon (read this first)
General Tests
Normal Installation
Building from Source
Command Line Options
Configuring The Daemon
Writing Test/Repair Scripts
Testing Before Deployment

Useful Links

Official source code (currently V5.16, and also older versions) can be pulled from here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/watchdog/code/ci/master/tree/

General bug tracking and issues can be looked at here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/watchdog/



The 'man' pages (check if they match your version):

watchdog (V5.15)
watchdog (V5.16)

watchdog.conf (V5.15)
watchdog.conf (V5.16)

Other useful sources of information are:

https://github.com/miniwark/miniwark-howtos/blob/master/setup_the_hardware_watchdog_timer_on-ubuntu_12.04.md
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/watchdog/watchdog-api.txt
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/watchdog/watchdog-kernel-api.txt

An excellent article covering watchdog hardware and the generally bad design of some hardware and software:

http://www.ganssle.com/watchdogs.htm

Last Updated on 8-Mar-2026 by Paul Crawford
Copyright (c) 2014-26 by Paul S. Crawford. All rights reserved.
Email psc(at)sat(dot)dundee(dot)ac(dot)uk
Absolutely no warranty, use this information at your own risk.