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Subject: Re: [PATCH][RFC] Proposal for a new watchdog interface using sysfs
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
Cc: Matt Porter <porter@cox.net>, lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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On Fri, 2003-02-14 at 13:48, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> I admit not having thoroughly read the source to check - is the userspace API
> for accessing  all these chips fairly uniform and rational, so that a user
> program can be reasonably sure that if stat("/dev/watchdog") returns zero, that
> it knows how to deal with it?  Or are they all sufficiently close to the "keep
> reloading a countdown timer from userspace, and if it ever doesn't get reloaded,
> kick the kernel in the seat of the pants" programming model?  Of course, even
> a disagreement on the units of the timer could be bad - a seconds/milliseconds
> clash could result is a *real* fast lack-of-joy situation.. ;)

watchdog interfaces have a defined API, which they all follow fairly closely. That
makes adding watchdogs as a device class nice and easy

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