Das_Watchdog 0.2.1 review

Das_Watchdog is a program heavily and shamefully inspired by the rt_watchdog program made by Florian Schmidt. However, this one ha

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 6K Developer: Kjetil S Matheussen

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Das_Watchdog is a program heavily and shamefully inspired by the rt_watchdog program made by Florian Schmidt.

However, this one has some improvements:

1. It works with 2.4 kernels as well as 2.6.
2. Instead of permanently setting all realtime processes to run non-realtime, das_watchdog only sets them temporary.
3. When the watchdog kicks in, an X window should pop up that tells you whats happening. (just close it after reading the message).

Installation:

make
cp das_watchdog /usr/local/sbin/
echo '/usr/local/sbin/das_watchdog >/dev/null &' >>/etc/rc.sysinit
reboot

Usage:

Whenever a program locks up the machine, the watchdog temporarily sets all realtime process to non-realtime for 8 seconds. You will get an xmessage window up on the screen whenever that happens.

To test it, run the attached program "test_rt", which immediatley freezes your machine. However, a window should pop up after about 5-6 seconds telling you that the watchdog set the process to non-realtime.

Use the "--force" option to set the priority of all timer processes to SCHED_FIFO/99.

If the xmessage window does not show up, it can be because the user logged into the machine has the home area placed on a non-root mounted disk.

When that happens, root is unable to read the users .Xauthority file. Unfortunately,
I have no (good) solution for that situation. But if thats not the case, please
report the problem to me.

Requirements:
xmessage (should be a part of X11)
libgtop2

What's New in This Release:
leaned up source a bit.
Properly find number of timer processes.
Added shortcuts for optargs and beautifiled the source a bit.