/tags/watchdog/ Recent content in Watchdog on Saleem Ansari Hugo -- gohugo.io en (c) 2024 Saleem Ansari Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000 /2010/10/11/cat-/dev/watchdog-reboots-the-system/ Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000 /2010/10/11/cat-/dev/watchdog-reboots-the-system/ I was surprized to find that following command reboots my Fedora 13 x86_64 system: cat /dev/watchdog Wait for around 30-50 seconds and Linux reboots! This happens even with a non-root user. Then I googled it I found this is a pretty interesting thread on the subject. Bottom line is It’s a watchdog device, it’s meant to reboot the machine if whatever task is poking the watchdog dies. So consider that in any installation if /dev/watchdog support is present in the default Linux kernel and the file has read permission to all users.