[PATCH v3] watchdog: Add hook for kicking in kdump path

[Eric W. Biederman]

Don Zickus <dzickus at redhat.com> writes:

> A common problem with kdump is that during the boot up of the
> second kernel, the hardware watchdog times out and reboots the
> machine before a vmcore can be captured.
>
> Instead of tellling customers to disable their hardware watchdog
> timers, I hacked up a hook to put in the kdump path that provides
> one last kick before jumping into the second kernel.
>
> The assumption is the watchdog timeout is at least 10-30 seconds
> long, enough to get the second kernel to userspace to kick the watchdog
> again, if needed.

Why not double the watchdog timeout? and/or pet the watchdog a little
more frequently.

This is the least icky hook I have seen proposed to be put on the kexec
on panic path, but I still suspect this may reduce the ability to take a
crash dump.  What happens if it was the watchdog timer that panic'd for
example.

Eric