On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 11:26:03 -0500, Michael W Cocke wrote:

> On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 23:19:14 GMT, Dan Stromberg
> <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>>Is there some sort of common or uncommon BIOS feature that will allow you
>>to totally reset a computer remotely, even after it's crashed?
>>
>>Maybe there's some sort of ISA/PCI/PCI-X card you can get, or a special
>>kind of powerstrip, or... some sort of standard BIOS feature, or maybe
>>one of the free BIOS implementations can do this?
>>
>>I'm thinking along the lines of maybe something that has a top-priority
>>NMI, so even if some other IRQ/NMI gets wedged, you might be able to yank
>>on the reset pin anyway. Or something like that. You tell me. :)
>>Please. Or even something with its own ultra-low-power, ultra-slow
>>additional CPU that runs all the time and just watches for a magic network
>>packet (authenticated somehow I assume, although the machines I want this
>>for are on an unrouted net anyway), and upon seeing it Reboots.
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>
>>Thanks!
>
> Do a google for "pc watchdog" - there's a whole class of card that
> plugs into the hardware and basically watches to see if the system
> crashes, and reboots if it does. Linux kernel has support for these
> already. I like the ones from pciwatchdog.com
>
> Mike-

"How crashed" does a system have to be, before one of these will kick in?

Do they only reset on a wedged CPU?

We're seeing hosts that accept connections, but the daemon on the port
can't do anything, even if the daemon is mlockall'd into memory, never
forks, never execs, and never hits the disk. Is such a card likely to
help in such a situation?