Softdog 1.1
(c) Christophe Dupre 1997
---------------------------

This is a software watchdog driver based on the driver that Alan Cox
included as part of the Linux distribution but modified so that it runs
more like a daemon. This version is heavily based on the work of Jamey
Graham, who released version 1.0 in 1996.

The software watchdog tries to "catch" computer lock-ups and will try
to reboot the machine in case one occurs. It also does some a few simple test
to catch some events (currently the ability to fork and open a file) and 
reboot the machine if they remain so for too long.

Bug reports, comments and patches are welcome. Please send them to my
primary email address: duprec@cic.qc.ca.


INSTALLATION
 
 For most, simply do a 'make install'.  This will compile the binary and 
 install it in /sbin and install the man page in /usr/man/man8.  It will also 
 create the character device /dev/watchdog with major# 10 and minor# 130.  
  
 You can also install components seperately:
  installbin - installs the binary in /sbin
  installman - installs the man page in /usr/man/man8
  installdev - creates the device /dev/watchdog

 To start the timer at bootup, simply add the following to
 /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
 
  # Start the software watchdog
  echo -n "Starting softdog driver.."
  /sbin/softdog
  echo "done"
  
  
Please see the file watchdog.txt in the Documentation directory in the linux
source distribution for additional information on the watchdog system.
