Included with Mac OS X Server, the Watchdog process monitors certain applications and re-launches them if they unexpectedly quit. On hardware that supports automatic restarts (e.g., Xserves), Watchdog can also restart the computer when it detects the operating system has stopped responding (”system hang”). The best part is that you can configure Watchdog to monitor and automatically restart applications other than the defaults, as explained in an Apple Knowledge Base article on Watchdog.

Posted by Justin at 11:04 AM PST — Tags: mac, network, cli