Crashes of tainted kernels

[Chris Murphy]

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:42 PM, Joe Zeff <joe at zeff.us> wrote:
> On 03/17/2015 08:22 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>>
>> 2. how to provide useful debugging info - if the user will not test a
>> non-tainted kernel I see no possible way for an automated system to
>> know where to file the bug
>
>
> You are assuming that it's practical (or even possible) to run without a
> tainted kernel.  Most people who use kmod-nvidia do so because they need
> better graphics than they can get from nouveau.  Asking them to do without
> the OEM drivers (which taint the kernel) may make it difficult if not
> impossible to get their work done, and it's not always easy.

I never said it was easy. I'm well aware of the barriers. I'm just
reporting the facts. There isn't some magical substitute to figure out
oopses.

>And, in the
> case of my laptop, I don't even know, as yet, why it's tainted because
> there's no hardware involved that wasn't installed at the factory.  Even if
> I knew what caused the taint, how am I supposed to remove it?  Yes, in
> theory it should be possible on every computer, but I, at least live in
> reality, not theory.

Taint is always caused by out of tree kernel modules. If you haven't
installed anything that installs kernel modules, most typically that's
video drivers, then it could be an MCE in which case that's a legit
Fedora kernel bug to file, but probably also upstream at
bugzilla.kernel.org as well.


-- 
Chris Murphy