OPNsense Forum

Hi all,
I tied to find a solution, but I was not able.
Is there a way to enable and use the APU2 hardware watchdog in OPNSense?

This is very helpful if you have units that are not physically managed.

Please let me know.
Thank you.
Best,

Late reply, but I just got it to work on my apu2d4

First, be sure that you actually have an apu2 board. Some apu1 were marketed as apu2 and apu4 even tho apu2 to apu6 are completely different boards. If your board has a BR2032 battery, it's apu1, if it has LR44, it's apu2.

Second, have a reasonably recent CoreBOOT flashed that actually allows configuration of the Watchdog in BIOS (4.0.26 and higher should do).

Next, open a root shell and do a kdload amdsbwd

If that confirms having found a Watchdog device (the message should be something like

Quoteamdsbwd0: <AMD ... Watchdog Timer> at iomem ......... on isa0

If so, continue.

1) add a Tunable amdsbwd_load, set its value to yes
2) reboot, watch the boot output for that same message from when you loaded the module by hand. If not, recheck your tunable until it properly loads the module during boot
3) reboot, enable watchdog in BIOS. I'd recommend at least 300 seconds to be on the safe side

If you ever need to reinstall your box, be sure to disable the watchdog before booting the installer, and re-enable it only after having restored your config. Not loading the module (which the installer won't do) *will* reliably reset your board after the set amount of time.

Disclaimer: works for me, your results may vary