The Kick-off! hardware monitors your system by periodically communicating with the Kick-off! software. Every few seconds, the software resets a "watchdog timer" in the hardware, which then counts down each second. As long as the system is running normally, the software will keep resetting this timer, and it will never reach zero.
Tip: You can see the system timer working by watching the blinking status light on the Kick-off! unit. Periodically the blinking stops, showing the software resetting the system timer. See "Status light patterns" for more information.
If the system crashes, the Kick-off! software will stop running, and won't be able to reset the system timer. When the timer reaches zero, the hardware will attempt to restart the computer.
Kick-off! restarts the computer by first switching off its power outlet to turn the computer off. A few seconds later, it turns its power outlet back on.
Note: In order to use Kick-off!'s system crash recovery, you must configure your BIOS to start up automatically when power is applied. See "Hardware Installation" for more information.
Kick-off! for Linux includes support for application crash detection via two methods. The first allows Kick-off! to monitor unmodified applications for abnormal termination. We provide a wrapper application, Launcher, to allow this. When you invoke an application via Launcher, Kick-off! monitors that application for abnormal termination, and responds as you specify in the "Application Crashes" panel of kickoff-gui.
The second method can directly monitor applications which have support for our Rebound! Timer application timer technology. An application with Rebound! support periodically checks in with Kick-off! to show that it is still running normally. If the application fails to check in before its timer expires, Kick-off! will respond accordingly.
Tip: You can see an application's Rebound! Timer working in the "application status" section of the Kick-off! control panel.
We offer an SDK that can be compiled into an application to provide UpBeat support. This SDK is installed as part of the standard Kick-off! for Linux installation. See "Using Rebound! Timers" for more information.