The Real Problem With Linux's New BSOD System

Key Takeaways

just a short while back I put out this video about Linux cter Panic messages basically being completely broken and not actually showing when you want to see them now the tier of that video is when you're in a gooey which for the most part is how most of you are going to be using Linux yes I know there are some of you weird ones who do everything in TTY and yes there is Linux on the server but we're not talking about that we are talking about desktop Linux usage and for the most part you're going to be in some sort of graphical environment whether it's gnome KDE I don't know hyperland I3 sway Cosmic when that comes out xsc or basically anything else if a Linux kernel panic happens which is likely going to be when it happens because that is when you're spending most of your time you're going to notice a problem you're not going to see a log you're not going to see any Panic message you're going to see nothing when a panic happens the last thing you see is the last frame that was rendered and then everything just stops then you do a power cycle and you realize that you never actually saw a kernel panic message and most people in Linux are aware of Linux kernel panics are aware that you're supposed to see some sort of log they've maybe seen one in a TTY context they've seen pictures they've heard discussion but had Absolut absolutely no idea that in most contexts are just never going to work and I think after that video came out and after a bunch of other discussions more people are aware of the issue that exists with Colonel Panic messages and there is less push back against trying to implement a new solution to fix it now luckily the Upstream kernel developers have been aware for a very long time that there is an issue with Kernel Panic messages they know they don't work because they are the kernel developers they are in the context with likely going to be the ones who actually want to see what is happening there now a big reason why things have been broken is for a long time now we've been moving away from konel Level virtual terminals but I'm not going to rehash everything I said in that video go watch that full video for full context just know for this video that this has been a 10 plus year work in progress to create a system known as DRM Panic how DRM Panic works on the back and how you make it actually functions if there's a kernel panic and all of that complex detail not super important for this video what is important is when we talk about deer and panic it's effectively the Linux equivalent of a Windows bod a blue screen of death now when we talking about a bod or an error screen or whatever term you want to use there's actually a Wikipedia page called screens of death that goes through a bunch of different platforms and how they show error screens but again not important when we're talking about this system what is the most important aspect to discuss is it ensuring that it shows under every situation that a konel panic is going to happen is it the information being shown maybe some shorthand error message that the user can go and do something about versus a long form log that you might want to share with the developer is it the layout of the information to make sure that yes you have the information there but it's actually understandable and approachable and someone knows what they can go and do with it is it even something as simple as customizability for users and dist so if a dist like auntu wanted to make it orange to go with their orange branding they could go and do so no the absolute most important aspect of a bod that needs to be bike shedded is the color of the error screen just last week Haven Martinez posted this image on Mastadon a blue screen of death on the Beagle playboard using the new DRM Panic infrastructure contributed by my awesome colleague Joseline FM I am really bad with names as always I apologize so this is what it looks like now keep in mind this is very early stuff this is just basically a proof of concept to demonstrate that it is functioning there's going to be more to this when it is ready so here we have a little Tux in the corner an exclamation mark and in the center I don't know if you can read that it says colel Panic please reboot your computer now obviously that's not useful information you know that you need to reboot your computer because your screen is currently blue again there will be more later on down the line in case you don't know like I didn't the eagal playboard is this nice little single board computer think something like a Raspberry Pi but not important now considering it's been talked about on fonics before it should be absolutely no surprise that this post also got an article as well and if you like the fonic standard it's what you would expect from fonic you get an explanation of what happened here the backstory why this is being worked on how you would test it on your system an example of using it a quote about the thing and you know generally fonics being fonics I like fonics I know a lot of people don't but I do think it is a fairly good at least initial source to go and do further research from wst I like fonics and I like the work that Michael arabel does the comments on fonics are always just they are something else and would you be surprised if I told you the thing they are focusing on is not DRM panic is not colel panic messages actually becoming a thing that works no it's the color being used in the demo why does it have to be blue don't copy Windows I'd prefer black with white text I agree the bright blue color is Harsh and unpleasant I'd personally prefer it to be dark red or Amber much nicer less stress inducing colors your system just crashed there should be a stress inducing situation this one I think is a joke but I do still like it red color would be more suitable for representing a panic with a penguin skull that's why I think this one's a joke no don't go with Windows blue please and there is eight pages some of the comments are reasonable some of people like ah well maybe it's tunable by the dro and things like that but how is there eight pages of comments of people just arguing about what the color should be now the best part about this right is most people don't even realize the color is configurable it doesn't have to be blue in fact it doesn't even default to being blue it defaults to a black screen it was set to Blue for the sake of making the screenshot because it's the Linux Beast sod you know blue is part of the name Beast sod so so here you go funny blue screen now I've said this in Prior videos but a lot of people misunderstand the purpose of the beod and they blame the Beast sod as being some terrible thing with Windows the Beast sod is the messenger there's nothing Beast sod is doing wrong the Beast sod is there because the other stuff is the problem and the other stuff is crashing causing the Beast sod to happen the beod is just an error screen if the rest of the stack was stable and the rest of the stack didn't crash you would never see the beod but a lot of people find it very easy to attack the thing that they see when something goes wrong rather than the thing actually causing the thing to happen that it's telling you is going wrong also prior to Windows having bods prior to that there were cases where you could just say well my system crashed I don't really care right I'm just going to keep trying to use it and see what happens the B is there to make sure that if your system is in a basically unrecoverable State you have to restart it because you might corrupt some data if you keep trying to use it and I get why people blame the beod for being this terrible thing but is not the thing causing the problem now once that fonic post came out uh there was some comments under this sort of pointing out the dumb comments being made on the fonics forums judging from the Fantastic comments on fonics the big issue is the choice of color I wonder how blue screen of death can have any other color indeed indeed indeed now in response to this incredibly productive discussion coming out of frics forums hather made another post it seems that a blue Linux de Panic triggered some people so here is a black screen of death on an SSD 1306 display Colonel Panic please reboot yo because there's not enough space to show all of the text there as I said the color is configurable in fact this is how it's supposed to look by default obviously on a display that is not this small where it's cutting off a bit of the text but this is the color being used because why would you render a different color by default everything else that happens on Linux in the TT y has a black screen anyway so it's obviously going to be a black screen by default now in response to this post being made fonx also made a follow-up post as well Linux can have a black screen of death for panics which again mentions the previous post hey there was a blue screen of death before given complaints about it being too like Microsoft Windows following his recent Linux blue screen of death Showcase with the new Duram Panic code in Linux 6.10 and supported by select direct rendering manager display drivers hav showed a black screen of death is possible if so desired because that's actually the default and the reason it was blue before is because it was a beast s joke it was a joke about blue screen of deaths that's the reason it was configured to be blue there you have it for those that may have otherwise experienced bad memories of Windows bods again I don't understand why you have bad memories of them you need to understand that a bod is a good thing you want a bod you don't want your system to just randomly power down if something goes wrong and the for comments because they're the fonics for comment again I just focused this time Focus on why having a beast St this person doesn't actually realize that we don't have work in Colonel Panic anyway you don't like linux's verbosity because you've never actually seen it you think you've seen it but you actually haven't and again more people focusing on the color because why why it's just a error screen you're probably never going to see it anyway the thing that matters with the error screen is does it have the information you care about for the error screen the color of the information doesn't matter as long as the color you can actually tell what is being said on the screen like you don't have red text on a red background it doesn't matter what the screen actually looks like you could have a yellow background a red background a green background and you know what but it especially doesn't matter because you're probably never actually going to see a kernel panic anyway and if you do see one you're probably not going to do anything with it because unless you're running intentionally buggy kernel modules because maybe there just isn't a better option or maybe you're a developer that is trying to work on a kernel module Linux is relatively stable you maybe see a crash once every year maybe once every couple of years is and are you going to do anything about it no probably not you're probably not going to go and make a bug report about some random konel Panic you had you might maybe if it's a frequent kernel panic but if it's this oneoff thing that you have no idea how to replicate I guarantee you're just going to reboot your system you're like huh that was weird well I'm going to go on with my day now but for the people who actually do something with the logs you know the colel developers or just people who are frequently reporting bugs to the colonel it is very nice to have a system in place where it's actually going to work and you are actually going to see a log when the colel panics hopefully it doesn't panic though but what do you think do you think the color of your AA screen actually matters are you going to argue in a comment section about how blue is such a terrible color and should never ever be used because you know I'm expecting it and now that I've said it I know it's going to happen so have some fun with that I guess now if you like the video go like the video and if you really like the video and you want to become one of these amazing people over here check out the patreon scribes Le baray Linked In the description down below that's going to be it for me and here's a good way to break things [Music] oh