BCMDOG(4)

💖 BCMDOG(4) 💖

okay so this is the manual page for bcmdog — lowkey one of those tiny drivers that just quietly does its job and never asks for credit. It lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual, which is giving very much "backstage pass to the kernel" energy ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

bcmdog — the Broadcom BCM283x watchdog timer, aka the little guy whose whole personality is "if you stop petting me, everything dies" 🐶💀

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bcmdog* at fdt?

yes bestie, that's the whole config line. one line. she's minimal, she's iconic, she does not need more. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So the bcmdog driver provides support for the integrated watchdog timer that's baked right into the Broadcom BCM2835, BCM2836 and BCM2837 SoCs. That's it, that's the whole lore — it's the built-in watchdog, it's already on the chip, you don't gotta install anything extra. built in, showing off, main character energy fr 👑✨

No cap, it's a watchdog. Its entire purpose in life is to check whether the system is still alive and to bite when it isn't. 🫶

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• intro(4) — the general intro to section 4, start here if you're new here 💖
• watchdog(4) — the watchdog framework itself, the bigger picture 🐕
• watchdogd(8) — the daemon that actually pets the dog so it doesn't go feral 🔥

go read those too, iyktyk, they're literally the whole friend group 🧚💜

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⭐ HISTORY ⭐

The bcmdog driver first appeared in OpenBSD 6.1 — so she's been around, she's got seniority, she's a legend at this point. 🌸

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🍓 AUTHORS 🍓

The bcmdog driver was written by Patrick Wildt <patrick@blueri.se> — thank him, he ate and left no crumbs 💅👑

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just a reminder bestie: it's a watchdog. if the thing it's watching stops responding, it does the dramatic thing. no "are you sure?" prompt. do not test this for fun 🙈💀

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Debian 🎀 April 1, 2018 🎀 BCMDOG(4) — mwah, that's the sign-off, love u, go pet your watchdog 💖✨🦋