This article contains information specific to the Dell EMC PowerEdge server hardware. The procedures have been tested on a PowerEdge R240.
Hardware Watchdog
The hardware watchdog is a very efficient recovery method in the unlikely event the computer experience interference that makes the system instable and freezes. Follow these steps to enable the watchdog handled from Linux systemd.
From the terminal as the pixi-admin user enter:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system.conf
This opens up the systemd config text file. Find the entry "#RuntimeWatchdogSec=60" uncomment by remove the leading "#" to enable the watchdog. The time value can be set to any time value in seconds that fits your environment. Type ctrl+o then enter to save and ctrl+x to close the text editor.
Next open up modules.conf in the Nano editor by enter the following line in the terminal.
sudo nano /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf
Add the following line in the config file:
ipmi_watchdog
Type ctrl+o then enter to save and ctrl+x to close the text editor. Restart the server. To test, it is possible to freeze the kernel using the following method.
This method can cause issues, make sure there is backups available before trying this. Don’t do this in a production environment
In the terminal as pixi-admin user, type:
sudo -s
Sets user as root.
echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
Enables all sysrq.
echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger
Creates a “kernel-panic” that halts the system. A secondary recover action counter starts at 255 seconds and when countdown = 0 the hardware should restart.