When watchdog detects that process is locked it handles situation this way:

        if (getpid() == getpgrp()) {
            kill(-getpgrp(), SIGTERM);
        } else {
            _exit(1);
        }

-- so in case of parent process (vast majority of cases) it sends SIGTERM to the whole group of processes, including itself.
The problem is this signal is handled by libtevent handler:

server_setup()->tevent_add_signal(event_ctx, event_ctx, SIGTERM, 0, default_quit, ctx);

(and also by be_process_install_sigterm_handler() but this should go away - see #4088)
And this handler just adds event for processing into tevent mainloop. But if tevent mainloop is stuck (exactly the case that triggers WD) then this event will not be processed and this makes watchdog useless.

This behavior can actually be seen in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1625937 where be-process is only terminated after very-long-running sync task is actually completed.

I propose to amend watchdog_handler() (and corresponding part of watchdog_detect_timeshift()) to always do _exit() (after optionally sending a signal to the group):

        if (getpid() == getpgrp()) {
            kill(-getpgrp(), SIGTERM);      <-- or may be `kill(0, SIGTERM);`
        }
        _exit(1);