Hp is providing a Hardware WatchDog Timer driver that will only work with the

specific HW Timer located in the HP ProLiant iLO 2 ASIC. The iLO 2 HW Timer

will generate a Non-maskable Interrupt (NMI) 9 seconds before physically

resetting the server, by removing power, so that the event can be logged to

the HP Integrated Management Log (IML), a Non-Volatile Random Access Memory

(NVRAM). The logging of the event is performed using the HP ProLiant ROM via

an Industry Standard access known as a BIOS Service Directory Entry.
--- linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/Makefile.orig	2007-10-12 11:43:44.000000000 -0500

+++ linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/Makefile	2007-10-15 07:56:31.000000000 -0500

@@ -118,3 +118,10 @@
 # Architecture Independant

 obj-$(CONFIG_SOFT_WATCHDOG) += softdog.o

+

+#

+# Makefile for the hp WatchDog driver.

+#

+CFLAGS_hpwdt.o += -O

+obj-$(CONFIG_HP_WATCHDOG) += hpwdt.o

+

--- linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/Kconfig.orig	2007-10-12 11:43:44.000000000 -0500

+++ linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/Kconfig	2007-10-15 07:57:27.000000000 -0500

@@ -55,6 +55,19 @@

 	  To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the

 	  module will be called softdog.
+config HP_WATCHDOG

+        tristate "Hewlett-Packard watchdog"

+        depends on WATCHDOG && X86

+        help

+          A software monitoring watchdog and NMI sourcing driver. This driver

+          will detect lockups and provide stack trace. Also, when an NMI

+          occurs this driver will make the necessary BIOS calls to log

+          the cause of the NMI. This is a driver that will only load on a

+          HP ProLiant system with a minimum of iLO2 support.

+          To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the

+          module will be called hpwdt.

+

+

 # ALPHA Architecture
 # ARM Architecture

--- linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/hpwdt.c.orig	2007-10-15 07:53:12.000000000 -0500

+++ linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/char/watchdog/hpwdt.c	2007-10-15 07:53:12.000000000 ...
[ message continues ]

--=20

Andrey Panin		| Linux and UNIX system administrator

pazke@donpac.ru		| PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:05:50 -0400 (EDT)
Hi,
Your patch looks quite clean in general; however it does make me wonder

if it should either leverage or expand the arch/x86/pci/pcbios.c

infrastructure for doing BIOS32 calls and share that.... it's kinda

unpleasant as a general thought to have drivers poke this deep into

various guts of the system/bios.... esp if the common code has to do

something very similar already.
Greetings,

   Arjan van de Ven

-

This could be done but then it adds complexity to the patch (as now two

different parts of the kernel need to be modified) and requires

regression testing for multiple platforms and OEM's.
This patch is isolated similar to the other HW specific HW Watchdog

Timers and yet provides a common Linux user interface that is applicable

across all OEM platforms that choose to implement a HW watchdog timer

device driver.
We chose to keep the changes isolated at this time to gain quick

acceptance upstream. 
-----Original Message-----

From: Arjan van de Ven [mailto:arjan@infradead.org]

Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:16 PM

To: Mingarelli, Thomas

Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Mingarelli, Thomas

Subject: Re: [HP ProLiant WatchDog driver] hpwdt HP WatchDog Patch
Hi,
Your patch looks quite clean in general; however it does make me wonder

if it should either leverage or expand the arch/x86/pci/pcbios.c

infrastructure for doing BIOS32 calls and share that.... it's kinda

unpleasant as a general thought to have drivers poke this deep into

various guts of the system/bios.... esp if the common code has to do

something very similar already.
Greetings,

   Arjan van de Ven

-