Watchdog package installation is unclear/flawed

[paulv]

The watchdog package does not allow a persistent installation across a reboot using the systemV way of doing things in Jessie Lite (2016-03-18) anymore. The installation messages of the package shown on the console are confusing and do not point to solutions. The only way to get it working across a reboot now is to use rc.local or cron. That is a kludge at best, so what is the correct installation procedure now.

Trying to install watchdog the systemd way is also not working. Although the systemd service files for watchdog and wd_keepalive are installed, they do not work without changes and there are no pointers offered to lead to a proper installation.

I wrote a post on the Raspberri Pi forum that details the problems with the messages and the installation issues.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=147501&p=973710#p973710

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrew Dittes (adittes)]

I ran into this issue today, and at the very least it is a documentation issue.

The only way I've found to get watchdog running on startup is to modify watchdog.service.

I found instructions on how to do this here: https://kd8twg.net/2015/10/30/raspberry-pi-enabling-watchdog-on-raspbian-jessie/

Basically you just need to add the following lines to /lib/systemd/system/watchdog.service:

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

After that, systemctl enable watchdog.service works as intended.

However, it doesn't seem right that you should modify a system file to get it to start correctly. If there is a better way to start watchdog, it should be documented somewhere. Otherwise, should I create a patch to add this change? Or would it be better to report this to Debian?