WATCHDOGD(8)            OpenBSD System Manager's Manual           WATCHDOGD(8)

NAME
     watchdogd - watchdog timer retrigger daemon

SYNOPSIS
     watchdogd [-dnq] [-i interval] [-p period]

DESCRIPTION
     watchdogd is a daemon to activate and periodically retrigger the
     watchdog(4) timer device from userland.  watchdogd is designed to work in
     high load environments, where other methods (such as a shell script in-
     voking sysctl(8)) would involve too much overhead.

     The basic premise is that after every interval seconds, watchdogd resets
     the hardware timer to period.  See also watchdog(4) for more information
     on how watchdog timers work.

     The options are as follows:

     -d      Do not daemonize.  If this option is specified, watchdogd will
             run in the foreground.

     -i interval
             Specify how often, in seconds, watchdogd should retrigger the
             hardware timer.  If no interval is specified, the value of period
             (see below) divided by three is used.

     -n      Do not restore the watchdog to its original values once it has
             been activated.  With this set, the system will be rebooted by
             the watchdog even after a halt(8).

     -p period
             Set the hardware timer to expire in period seconds.  The default
             is 30 seconds.

     -q      Be quiet.  With this option specified, watchdogd will not output
             a warning message if the underlying hardware adjusted the timeout
             period.

SEE ALSO
     watchdog(4), sysctl(8)

HISTORY
     The watchdogd program first appeared in OpenBSD 3.8.

AUTHORS
     watchdogd was written by Marc Balmer <mbalmer@openbsd.org>.

OpenBSD 4.7                      May 31, 2007                                1
