mhhh - since it cost me more then one hour to find out why my machine reboots and triggering a reboot by just _reading_ a file on my system, device node or not is at least very weird behaviour from a user`s perspective.
waiting for an user-space daemon to start handling of /dev/watchdog file (opening it and manipulating it from time to time to show that it's still alive. When you cat the file, kernel recognizes it as that such an app is taking over control of the watchdog and starts it.
it`s looks a little bit too simple for me. triggering a reboot just by some simple open() and read() and close() ? let`s wait what the maintainer has to tell.
regards roland
OK, Roland, but it's Linux :-). Isn't "rm -rf /" a simple command ? Yes, it is :-). Less keystrokes than "cat /dev/watchdog". And its impact is even more catastrophic :-). It's the reason why working as root is so much discouraged. With regards, Pavel Troller