3.6 Watchdogs

A watchdog timer is an electronic timer that is used to detect and recover from computer malfunctions. During normal operation, the computer regularly resets the watchdog timer. If the computer fails to reset the watchdog, the timer will elapse and generate a timeout signal used to initiate corrective actions typically include placing the computer system in a safe state and restoring normal system operation.

Many users need this feature due to their system's mission-critical role (i.e. servers), or because of the lack of power reset (i.e. embedded devices). Thus, this feature is required for a good operation in some situations. On the other hand, normal users (i.e. desktop and laptop) do not need this feature and can disable it.

To disable watchdog timers (both software and hardware), append nowatchdog to your boot parameters, inside /etc/default/grub file, in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable, then run update-grub.

To check the updated configuration, run cat /proc/sys/kernel/watchdog.

Disabling watchdog timers increases performance and lowers power consumption.