readme

PC watch dog driver

Berkshire PC Watchdog Card Driver

Copyright (c) 1999-2002 Holger Eiboeck, All Rights Reserved.
              http://www.pcwd.de

    ideas and parts of the code by Kenji Hollis <[e-mail]>
    and Friedrich Lobenstock <[e-mail]>

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
    as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
    2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
	
    The pcwd driver is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
    General Public License for more details.



WHAT IS IT

    pcwd is a linux kernel device driver for the Berkshire Products 
    PC Watchdog ISA or PCI card. see http://www.berkprod.com/

    The PC Watchdog is a card that offers the same type of functionality
    that the WDT card does, only it doesn't require an IRQ to run.  
    Furthermore, the ISA Revision C card and the PCI card allows you to
    monitor any IO Port to automatically trigger the card into being reset.
    This way you can make the card monitor hard drive status, or anything 
    else you need.

    The Watchdog Driver has one basic role: to talk to the card and send
    signals to it so it doesn't reset your computer ... at least during
    normal operation.

    The Watchdog Driver will automatically find your watchdog card, and will
    attach a running driver for use with that card.  After the watchdog
    drivers have initialized, you can then talk to the card using a PC
    Watchdog program.
    
    I suggest putting a "echo disable > /proc/pcwd" before the beginning of 
    an fsck on slow machines, and a "echo enable > /proc/pcwd" immediately 
    after the end of an fsck.

    The driver should work with all REV C cards, but it should also limited
    support the old REV A cards although I cannot verify this. It now 
    supports also the new PCI card.

    I have tested it on kernel 2.4.18 SMP on i386 with a REV C 
    card Firmware 1.31a without and 1.40a with temp option. It is also 
    tested with an PCI version of the card with Firmware 1.02.

    If you use kernel 2.2 then you must use pcwd revision 1.39 which is
    the last version supporting this.

INSTALLATION

    See INSTALL


FEATURES

    There is a new /proc device command interface that makes a control 
    application unneccessary.

    This works simply by writing to the /proc device:

        echo command > /proc/pcwd

        where <<command>> is one of the following:

    'help'
        shows a command overview
	
    'enable'
        enables the watchdog timer.	

    'disable'
        disables the watchdog timer.
	
    'hardreset'
        activates a harware reset in 5 seconds, by telling the watchdog 
        card to short circuit the reset line. Maybe useful, if you cannot 
        unmount your damaged root filesystem and really want to reboot.
        The delay allows you to do some unmounting, syncing, etc after
        sending the command

    'celsius' / 'fahrenheit'
        switch the temperature degree display from celsius to fahrenheit
        and back. Default: 'celsius'

    'verbose' / 'quiet' / 'debug'
        each command prints a kernel message. If you don't want this e.g.
        in a shell script, use 'quiet'. If you want to turn verbosity back
        on, use 'verbose'. Default: 'verbose'

    'clear' [ONLY PCI]
        clears the trip status and led
		
    'arm 0' / 'arm immediately' / 'arm 30' / 'arm 60'
        you can override the 2.5 minutes the watchdog waits before it arms
        itself. 'arm 0' means the same as 'arm immediately'. e.g. arm 30
        means: wait 30 seconds until watchdog is armed.
        [ONLY PCI]: any arm time value is allowed

    'nvarm [value]' [ONLY PCI]
        with this command a new power on delay time can be saved in the
        nvram of the watchdog card instead of the 2.5 minutes default.
        A value of 0 means default 2.5 minutes.

    'timeout 2' / 'timeout 4' / 'timeout 8'
        now it is possible to get shorter watchdog delay time, then with
        the dip switches.
        [ONLY PCI]: any arm time value is allowed

    'nvtimeout [value]' [ONLY PCI]
        with this command a longer or shorter timeout can be set and saved
        in nvram of the watchdog card instead of the DIP switch default.
        A value of 0 means a return to the DIP switch settings.
	
    'dio [value]' [ONLY PCI]
        set or read the 4 bit digital I/O port. Values accepted are between
	0 and 15.

    'relay [1on, 1off, 2on, 2off, 2temp, 2notemp, 1invert,
            1nvinvert, 1noinvert, 1nvnoinvert]' [ONLY PCI]
        set or read the relay control according to the manual.

    'tempoffset [value]' [ONLY PCI]
         set the temperature offset of the temperature trip points.
		  
    'ping' , 'pong' or 'tickle'
         tickle the watchdog one time


CONTACT
    Holger Eiboeck
    Tel [phone]
    Fax [phone]
    mailto:[e-mail]
    http://www.pcwd.de