Watchdog timer for Raspberry Pi

Just a quick note: I set up the watchdog timer facility on the Raspberry Pi this evening following the directions at http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/1401/how-do-i-hard-reset-a-raspberry-pi pretty much verbatim. Here's an excerpt from the blog, signature at end:

You can use the BCM2708's hardware watchdog.

To use it begin by loading the module:

sudo modprobe bcm2708_wdog

Then edit the /etc/modules file:

sudo nano /etc/modules

and add the following line:

bcm2708_wdog

Next you will need to setup the watchdog daemon.

Install and confiigure it to start on bootup:

sudo apt-get install watchdog chkconfig
chkconfig watchdog on
sudo /etc/init.d/watchdog start

Next configure watchdog:

sudo nano /etc/watchdog.conf
# Uncomment the line watchdog-device = /dev/watchdog

The watchdog daemon will send /dev/watchdog a heartbeat every 10 seconds. If /dev/watchdog does not receive this signal it will restart your Raspberry Pi.

answered Aug 2 '12 at 4:34 Steve Robillard 6,17723155

The daemon monitors the state of various things defined in the file /etc/watchdog.conf, including the existence of several files,  successful pings, etc. and stops signaling the watchdog timer if they don't exist, which resets the Raspberry Pi.