The initial watchdog time (from when the system is rebooted at the start of a recipe, until it reached Anaconda %pre which triggers install_start which extends the watchdog) is currently set to the time of the first task (often /distribution/install which has TaskTime: 20 minutes) plus 30 minutes leeway = 50 minutes.

For most normal systems, which POST in a few minutes or less, 50 minutes is far too long. If the installer fails to start for some reason, that means Beaker will wait 50 minutes before the watchdog aborts the recipe.

For some unusual hardware, which takes a very long time to POST, 50 minutes may not be enough time to start Anaconda.

The initial watchdog should not be based on the first task in the recipe, but rather should be configurable per system with a sane default (perhaps 15 minutes), similar to the configurable power quiescent period we added not long ago.