Re: [PATCH 1/2] watchdog: Fix potential kref imbalance when opening watchdog

[Oleksij Rempel]

On 25.09.2017 18:17, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> If a watchdog driver's open function sets WDOG_HW_RUNNING with the
> expectation that the watchdog can not be stopped, but then stops the
> watchdog anyway in its stop function, kref_get() wil not be called in
> watchdog_open(). If the watchdog then stops on close, WDOG_HW_RUNNING
> will be cleared and kref_put() will be called, causing a kref imbalance.
> As result the character device data structure will be released, which in
> turn will cause the system to crash on the next call to watchdog_open().

Ach, ok. I see. So the stop patch should remove it from the start.