Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] wdt: sunxi: Move restart code to the watchdog driver

[Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>]

Hi All,

> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 07:30:56AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > >>The patches _are_ in my watchdog-next branch and get some coverage from
> > >>both my auto-builders and from Fenguang's build robots, so while they are
> > >>not in linux-next, they are not completely in the dark either.
> > >
> > >So, this patch finally didn't make it into 3.16. Great. Now, we can't
> > >even reboot the boards.
> > >
> > >Given how it's just impossible to get something merged reliably
> > >through the watchdog tree, I guess I should just start merging the
> > >patches through mine?
> > >
> > 
> > You can not really blame Wim here.
> > 
> > In this case, I suspect the major reason for not accepting the patch
> > is that I tried to provide a clean method / API for "reset through watchdog
> > subsystem", which went nowhere, in my understanding because someone objected
> > that it would be the wrong thing to do [1] and it didn't get approval /
> > acceptance from the arm maintainers. If it is wrong to reset the board
> > from the watchdog subsystem in a clean way, it is for sure even more wrong
> > to do it as you proposed in your patch.
> > 
> > My conclusion therefore is that all board reset code should move back out
> > of the watchdog subsystem, and that we should not accept such code in the
> > future. This is not my personal preference, but I do believe that we should
> > do it in a clean way or not at all.
> 
> Well, considering that this patch isn't depending on your reboot API
> set, and that Wim never either commented on this patch, your reboot
> API patchset or your pull request to say that he was not willing to
> merge this, there's still a huge failure to communicate.
> 
> I'm fine with any technical reason, let's debate on that. But the
> point is there has been no debate at all, only silence from his side.
> 
> I have been told some patches would be merged and I merged through my
> tree some patches that were depending on this one based on that
> assumption.
> 
> And now, we have a regression.
> 
> Anyway... I guess I should just revert some commits now.
> 

To continue the discussion: I would like to add an excerpt from drivers/watchdog/alim7101_wdt.c
/*
 *      Notifier for system down
 */

static int wdt_notify_sys(struct notifier_block *this,
                                        unsigned long code, void *unused)
{
        if (code == SYS_DOWN || code == SYS_HALT)
                wdt_turnoff();

        if (code == SYS_RESTART) {
                /*
                 * Cobalt devices have no way of rebooting themselves other
                 * than getting the watchdog to pull reset, so we restart the
                 * watchdog on reboot with no heartbeat
                 */
                wdt_change(WDT_ENABLE);
                pr_info("Watchdog timer is now enabled with no heartbeat - should reboot in ~1 second\n");
        }
        return NOTIFY_DONE;
}

For some systems the watchdog is the only way to reboot... So where we should put it, is not trivial neither...

Kind regards,
Wim.