Whatchdog support for Linux and Windows guests

Forza

I wanted to know if there is an official way to configure guest watchdogs on XCP-ng.

For those that don't know, a watchdog consists of two parts; a hardware part and a software part that runs inside the OS. The Watchdog usually runs at real-time priority and maintain a ping-pong signal with the watchdog hardware. The software part can be configured to monitor various aspects such as CPU load, interrupts, network connectivity,etc. If a trigger is reached, the software watchdog should send a reboot/reset signal to the watchdog hardware, which will reboot the computer. The same will also happen if the hardware watchdog losses heartbeat with its software counterpart. This timeout can often be configured too.

Some resources
Linux:

Windows seems to support Watchdog timer through 3rd party applications and IPMI tools:

I have seen some older threads about watchdog on Xen and they recommend the xen_wdt driver for Linux systems. However, I could not find that the xen_wdt was documented and no information on how to configure it on the Xen/XCP-ng side.

It would really be a useful tool to have watchdog support in XCP-ng with both Windows and Linux guest support.

A list of some earlier threads I found:
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/5101/watchdog-for-reboot-vm-when-it-s-broken-no-respond
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/5946/how-to-setup-virtual-hardware-watchdog
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/7048/watchdog-on-xcp-host

olivierlambert

Hi,

Have you tried to configure the /etc/default/watchdog as per one of the thread you quoted?

Forza

@olivierlambert said in Whatchdog support for Linux and Windows guests:

Hi,

Have you tried to configure the /etc/default/watchdog as per one of the thread you quoted?

You mean the https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/5101/watchdog-for-reboot-vm-when-it-s-broken-no-respond ? That thread did not conclude after the OP posted the error logs.

But my request is more on the officially supported side, and also for Windows support.

olivierlambert

This post specifically: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/57441

The person had issues to speak in English but wanted to tell this configuration worked.

You can use the xen_wdt backend to rely on a Xen operation to force restart the VM. I have no idea how it works on Windows.