Well, there are (at least) two problems:
- The "soft" watchdog isn't modularized (yet), so there are some interactions
between that module and the mouse module (see drivers/char/Makefile)
- "Normal" UN*X semantics dictate that a device driver is defined by
its major number, and the minor number should just be seen as a
parameter to the driver.
With the watchdog the major number is already used by the mouse
driver, so kerneld (which obeys the "standard" sematics) can't
differ between the watchdog and the mouse drivers.
If char-major-10 is loaded, then kerneld won't be triggered again.
A kludge _might_ be to add a "fake" dependency to /lib/modules/.../modules.dep
although this will break as soon as you do "depmod -a"...
A better solution would perhaps be to reserve a separate major number for
the watchdog module(s).
Bjorn <bj0rn@blox.se> <http://www.pi.se/blox/>