How To Install watchdog on CentOS 8
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install watchdog on CentOS 8.
What is watchdog
The watchdog program can be used as a powerful software watchdog daemon or may be alternately used with a hardware watchdog device such as the IPMI hardware watchdog driver interface to a resident Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). watchdog periodically writes to /dev/watchdog; the interval between writes to /dev/watchdog is configurable through settings in the watchdog sysconfig file. This configuration file is also used to set the watchdog to be used as a hardware watchdog instead of its default software watchdog operation. In either case, if the device is open but not written to within the configured time period, the watchdog timer expiration will trigger a machine reboot. When operating as a software watchdog, the ability to reboot will depend on the state of the machine and interrupts. When operating as a hardware watchdog, the machine will experience a hard reset (or whatever action was configured to be taken upon watchdog timer expiration) initiated by the BMC.
We can use yum or dnf to install watchdog on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install watchdog.
Install watchdog on CentOS 8 Using dnf
Update yum database with dnf using the following command.
sudo dnf makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install watchdog using dnf by running the following command:
sudo dnf -y install watchdog
Install watchdog on CentOS 8 Using yum
Update yum database with yum using the following command.
sudo yum makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install watchdog using yum by running the following command:
sudo yum -y install watchdog
How To Uninstall watchdog on CentOS 8
To uninstall only the watchdog package we can use the following command:
sudo dnf remove watchdog
watchdog Package Contents on CentOS 8
/etc/sysconfig/watchdog
/etc/watchdog.conf
/etc/watchdog.d
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/02
/usr/lib/.build-id/02/1152ba4f96decd10cc6e6d9124f7d78f519e24
/usr/lib/.build-id/4e
/usr/lib/.build-id/4e/d6e4f6a7e85fbde34928f979b9cadcb6ff6a31
/usr/lib/.build-id/b5
/usr/lib/.build-id/b5/0809b8f61fd4b17bc848efd121194413650af4
/usr/lib/systemd/system/watchdog-ping.service
/usr/lib/systemd/system/watchdog.service
/usr/libexec/watchdog/scripts
/usr/sbin/watchdog
/usr/sbin/wd_identify
/usr/sbin/wd_keepalive
/usr/share/doc/watchdog
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/ChangeLog
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/IAFA-PACKAGE
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/README
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/README.RHEL
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/README.watchdog.ipmi
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/TODO
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/README
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/another-chance.sh
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/dbcheck.sh
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/repair.sh
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/systemcheck.sh
/usr/share/doc/watchdog/examples/uptime.sh
/usr/share/man/man5/watchdog.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/watchdog.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/wd_identify.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/wd_keepalive.8.gz
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install watchdog on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.