WDCTL(8)

👑 WDCTL — show hardware watchdog status

okay bestie, so like, wdctl is the section 8 (system administration) girlie that shows you your hardware watchdog status 💖 she lives in the util-linux package and she's genuinely so useful, no cap.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wdctl [options] [device...]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

She shows you the hardware watchdog status. The default device is /dev/watchdog, iconic behaviour fr fr.

If you specify more than one device, the output gets separated by one blank line — one lil gap between each vibe check, periodt.

If the device is already being used, or you just don't have permissions to read from it, then wdctl reads data from sysfs instead. Lowkey important caveat: in that case, info about supported features (the flags) might be missing 😭. So don't come for her if the flags table is looking a little empty.

Also note that the number of supported watchdog features is hardware specific — it's giving "every watchdog is a different girl" energy, iykyk 🦋.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -f, --flags list — only print the flags you asked for, nothing else. selective queen ✨
• -F, --noflags — do not print information about flags at all. she's hiding that part.
• -I, --noident — do not print watchdog identity information. mystery era 🕵️
• -n, --noheadings — do not print a header line for the flags table. no headers, just vibes.
• -o, --output list — define which output columns to use in the table of watchdog flags. If you don't specify an output arrangement, a default set gets used. Use --help to get the list of all supported columns 👑
• -O, --oneline — print all the wanted info on one line, in key="value" output format. compact core 💖
• -p, --setpretimeout seconds — set the watchdog pre-timeout in seconds. A watchdog pre-timeout is a notification generated by the watchdog before the watchdog reset might occur, in the event the watchdog has not been serviced. This notification is handled by the kernel and can be configured to take an action using sysfs or by --setpregovernor 🚨
• -g, --setpregovernor governor — set the pre-timeout governor name. For available governors, look at the default wdctl output 🌈
• -r, --raw — use the raw output format. unfiltered, raw, no makeup 💀
• -s, --settimeout seconds — set the watchdog timeout in seconds ⏰
• -T, --notimeouts — do not print watchdog timeouts. time is a construct anyway 🙈
• -x, --flags-only — same as -I -T. that's literally it, a lil shortcut bestie 🎀
• -h, --help — display help text and exit. she's helping!
• -V, --version — display version and exit. she's telling you who she is 💅

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

• Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
• Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

For bug reports, use the issue tracker: <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>

bestie if something's broken, tell them!! they wanna know fr fr 🙏

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🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

The wdctl command is part of the util-linux package, which can be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archive: <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 you ate that. this was util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21 — periodt, slay, go check your watchdog 🦋✨👑