How to force a thread to stop

[Alex Martelli]

H J van Rooyen <mail at microcorp.co.za> wrote:

> "Paul Rubin" <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> Writes:
> 
> | "H J van Rooyen" <mail at microcorp.co.za> writes:
> | > *grin* - Yes of course - if the WDT was enabled - its something that
> | > I have not seen on PC's yet...
> |
> | They are available for PC's, as plug-in cards, at least for the ISA
> | bus in the old days, and almost certainly for the PCI bus today.
> 
> That is cool, I was not aware of this - added to a long running server it will
> help to make the system more stable - a hardware solution to hard to find bugs
> in Software - (or even stuff like soft errors in hardware - speak to the
> Avionics boys about Neutrons) do you know who sells them and what they are
> called? -

When you're talking about a bunch of (multiprocessing) machines on a
LAN, you can have a "watchdog machine" (or more than one, for
redundancy) periodically checking all others for signs of health -- and,
if needed, rebooting the sick machines via ssh (assuming the sickness is
in userland, of course -- to come back from a kernel panic _would_
require HW support)... so (in this setting) you _could_ do it in SW, and
save the $100+ per box that you'd have to spend at some shop such as
<http://www.pcwatchdog.com/> or the like...


Alex