Kerneloops.org Discovers Oops Number 100,000

Nov 19, 2008

When the Linux kernel hiccups, it issues a more or less cryptic error message known as an oops. To help kernel developers out a bit, the kerneloops.org website collects these crash signatures in a big database. The website recently registered the hundred-thousandth oops just about the time it celebrated its first birthday.

The oops database gives kernel programmers a better chance of determining what led to the chaos in memory so that they can hopefully solve the problem more quickly.

Number 100,000 at Kerneloops proved to be caused by the iwlwifi driver that runs the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN and PRO/Wireless 3945ABG adapters.

As a birthday present, developer Arjan van de Ven presented a few interesting statistics in a message on lwn.net. Most of the oopses were in the external/wadwifi/wrapper directory for the Madwifi driver, with the ones in the fs/jbd/journal.c directory for the journaling block device and driver/parport/procfs.c for the parallel port following close behind. After a gap, fourth place consisted of the external/fireglx/binary driver for the ATI graphics card.

Van de Ven ends his message on a positive note: "we've done a pretty good job of fixing the high occurrence bugs."

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