WD_IDENTIFY(8)

✨ NAME ✨

wd_identify — bestie, this one gets you the watchdog driver identity 👑

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

wd_identify [-c filename|--config-file filename] [-v|--verbose]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so here's the tea: this little utility opens up /dev/watchdog, pulls the identification string straight out of the watchdog, prints it for you, and then closes the device right after. Clean, quick, no strings attached. 🎀

Exit codes are literally the vibe check here:

• An exit code of zero means slay — you successfully got the driver identity. 💅
• A non-zero exit code means something went wrong, periodt. That could be: it's not configured in the config file, there's no device driver loaded, or the driver failed to respond to the ioctl request. 😭

Heads up bestie, this matters a LOT: you can only use wd_identify without triggering a reboot if your kernel was not compiled with the CONFIG_WATCHDOG_NOWAYOUT option enabled. Not me warning you about a reboot, fr fr. 💀

Also, lowkey important — you may have to stop the watchdog and/or wd_keepalive daemons first, so that wd_identify can actually access the watchdog device. Like, they're hogging it. 🙈

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

Here are the command line options you can hand over, gorgeous:

• -c config-file, --config-file config-file — use config-file as the configuration file instead of the default /etc/watchdog.conf. So if your config lives somewhere else, this is your moment. ✨
• -v, --verbose — print more diagnostic messages, because who doesn't love extra lore. This covers the parsing of the config file, and it also makes the program read back the current watchdog time-out value (that part only happens if it successfully opened the device, iykyk). 🔥

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /dev/watchdog — the watchdog device itself. The main character of this whole story. 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• watchdog.conf(5)
• watchdog(8)

And that's the whole page, bestie — written by the 4th Berkeley Distribution, dated Dec 2015. Iconic behavior honestly. Go get that driver identity 💜🫶