Re: [PATCH v5 5/5] watchdog: w83627hf_wdt: Add minute mode counting

[Guenter Roeck]

On 10/20/26 07:08, Tzung-Bi Shih wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 10:11:58AM +0200, Paul Louvel wrote:
> > All of the chips supported by the driver can be set to minute mode,
> > allowing timeout value up to 255 minutes.
> > Add it to the driver.
>
> I didn't review the patch carefully as I was thinking about a fundamental
> question: isn't 255 seconds already more than enough for a hardware
> watchdog?  Why does it need to support minute mode for timeouts larger than
> that?

One would think so, but oddly enough there are people and even large
companies (like the one you and me work for) using such large timeouts.

Guenter

> > @@ -49,7 +50,8 @@ enum chips { w83627hf, w83627s, w83697hf, w83697ug, w83637hf, w83627thf,
> >   static int timeout;			/* in seconds */
> >   module_param(timeout, int, 0);
> >   MODULE_PARM_DESC(timeout,
> > -		"Watchdog timeout in seconds. 1 <= timeout <= 255, default="
> > +		"Watchdog timeout in seconds. 1 <= timeout <= "
> > +				__MODULE_STRING(WATCHDOG_MAX_TIMEOUT) ", default="
> >   				__MODULE_STRING(WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT) ".");
>
> The patch is obviously not based on the watchdog-next branch (see commit
> b152ca999c5f ("watchdog: Replace __MODULE_STRING() with __stringify()")).