# Enabling watchdog.



## rihad (May 8, 2010)

Hi, I'm thinking of enabling the watchdog on our Dell PowerEdge 2950 / FreeBSD 8.0 amd64, so that it reboots the machine in case of lockups. 
Right now it doesn't work:

```
# watchdog
watchdog: patting the dog: Operation not supported
#
```
Looking through the kernel configuration I found two relevant settings:
In /sys/conf/NOTES:

```
#
# Add software watchdog routines.
#
options         SW_WATCHDOG
```
and in /sys/amd64/conf/NOTES:

```
#
# Watchdog routines.
#
options         MP_WATCHDOG
```

Which of them should I rebuild the kernel with? BTW, the current kernel is built with the default "options SCHED_ULE" to make good use of multiple CPUs, does watchdog work with it?

Thanks.


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## monwarez (Mar 18, 2017)

You could use one of this depending on the hardware (or load with `kldload`).


```
device ichwd       # intel ICH watchdog timer
device amdsbwd # AMD SB7xx watchdog timer
device viawd       # VIA south bridge watchdog timer
device wbwd       # Winbond watchdog timer
```


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## SirDice (Mar 21, 2017)

monwarez keep in mind you are responding to a 7 year old post. FreeBSD 8.0 has been End-of-Life for quite some time now.


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