Help! I Can't Reach the Power Switch

Pi is going to live in a remote location keeping it up and responding is better than a long drive just to press a reboot button. The watchdog service is going to help us out by rebooting the system when one of it's tests gets triggered.

Outline of Actions

1. Turn on watchdog hardware
2. Install Service
3. Configure watchdog tests
4. Run service
5. Setup service to run on boot

Action Details

1. Turning on the hardware

Modify system config

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add this:

# turn on the hardward watchdog 

dtparam=watchdog=on

After reboot you should see watchdog listed (I don't know why there are two)

$ ls -al /dev/watchdog*
crw------- 1 root root  10, 130 Sep 11 15:38 /dev/watchdog
crw------- 1 root root 252,   0 Sep 11 15:38 /dev/watchdog0

2. Install the software

sudo apt-get install watchdog

3. Enable the tests

sudo nano /etc/watchdog.conf

uncomment a few lines

max-load-1      = 24
min-memory      = 1
watchdog-device = /dev/watchdog

4. Run the Service

sudo systemctl start watchdog

sudo systemctl status watchdog

5. Run on Boot

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/watchdog.service

Change WantedBy to this:

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

And Enable

sudo systemctl enable watchdog

Resources

Enabling Watchdog on Raspberry Pi by Abdullah Bashir
Is this the correct way to install the watchdog package? by paulv