
OPW Linux kernel intern develops QR code for Oops messages - lclark
http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/773488-opw-intern-develops-qr-code-for-linux-kernel-oops-messages
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zachlipton
This could be one of the few remotely practical uses of QR codes in existence,
easily capturing ephemeral data. Now, most kernel messages can get logged to a
file, but there are cases in which that's not practical.

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westernmostcoy
This is pretty cool.

This title as posted on HN (not in the article) is silly, though. The Linux
kernel does not have "interns", this person is an intern for GNOME's OPW
(Outreach Program for Women):

[https://gnome.org/opw/](https://gnome.org/opw/)

~~~
lclark
True! She was an OPW intern for the Linux kernel. See more on Kernel Newbies:
[http://kernelnewbies.org/OPWIntro](http://kernelnewbies.org/OPWIntro)

The latest round of kernel internships (through OPW :) just started.

~~~
westernmostcoy
This looks like a neat program :) I look forward to seeing more cool stuff
come out of it!

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tqh
Welcome to the club :) [https://www.haiku-
os.org/blog/mmlr/2012-07-01_qr_encode_your...](https://www.haiku-
os.org/blog/mmlr/2012-07-01_qr_encode_your_kdl_output)

~~~
dfc
The write up leaves a lot to be desired. Using QR codes to display kernel oops
messages was proposed and demonstrated back in June 2012.[^1] Matt Garret even
mentions this in the lkml thread[^2] that the article links to, but for some
reason the author did not bother to look into mjg's response. So I am not sure
"welcome to the club" is accurate since the kernel has been a member (to the
extent that this patch is evidence of membership) of the club since June 2012.

[^1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/503677/](https://lwn.net/Articles/503677/)

[^2]:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/3/18/673](https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/3/18/673)

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devnonymous
Awesome ! Two points I'd like to make:

a. This idea, of using QR code to capture debug info, by itself is very
interesting and innovative (AFAIK). Does there exist user space applications
(desktop/web/mobile ...) that do similar things ? (ie: don't send us the logs,
just click a pic and attach it to your support ticket ...). I personally
haven't come across any, but of course my knowledge is limited. In any case, I
think this sort of log capturing for debug purposes certainly should've be
done more, IMHO.

b. Something like this could have never come out of proprietary software,
simply because this is someone developer's specific itch that needed to be
scratched. Whenever they say that open source software cannot compete with
proprietary software, because proper 'product management' doesn't exist which
guides feature development or that proprietary software will do the 'hard'
things that aren't interesting/fun or just too much effort, I always argue
against that. This sort of thing makes such arguments easier.

~~~
danudey
> Does there exist user space applications (desktop/web/mobile ...) that do
> similar things ? (ie: don't send us the logs, just click a pic and attach it
> to your support ticket ...)

If you're going to go to the trouble of adding extra code to handle that
behaviour, why not just add functionality to the app to report its own
crashes, error log excerpts, etc.? This is likely the reason you haven't come
across it: it makes less sense than just providing the option to submit the
crash reports directly. Less work for the user, less support overhead for the
developer, etc.

> Something like this could have never come out of proprietary software,
> simply because this is someone developer's specific itch that needed to be
> scratched

I'll point out that most other OSes have a way of capturing crash reports,
stack traces, memory dumps, etc. and sending them or storing them for
debugging. Linux is the only modern OS I've used that doesn't have the
capability to send crash reports back to the developers, which is why the QR
code trick is necessary in the first place, and the QR code functionality is
worse in all cases except where your storage system is completely
inaccessible/irreparably damaged.

~~~
andor
_Linux is the only modern OS I 've used that doesn't have the capability to
send crash reports back to the developers_

Red Hat's abrt does that:
[https://github.com/abrt/abrt/](https://github.com/abrt/abrt/)

Using kdump, it can also report kernel panics. Kdump acts as a kernel that is
executed after the main kernel panics. The fresh kernel has a clean state and
can store the dump in a file system.

 _the QR code functionality is worse in all cases except where your storage
system is completely inaccessible /irreparably damaged_

It's worse because it's not an automatic process. It's also better, because it
doesn't require external dependencies like abrt and kdump -- it's part of the
kernel.

~~~
couchand
It's also better on account of being accessible to a wider audience. I'd wager
far more users know what a QR code is than abrt, kdump etc. If there's just a
cursory error message and a QR code with dump nearly everyone can submit
helpful bug reports.

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wereHamster
What happened to storing the oops in EFI variables? You can store much more
data there than you can convey through QR codes displayed on the limited
screen space.

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jbb555
Ugh another hateful mobile phone thing being introduced just because it's new
and therefore better. What next? Removing the kernel and replacing it by web
service calls to a mobile phone "app".

Keep this rubbish out of my kernel please.

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PeterWhittaker
Wicked cool. I may steal, er, adopt this for our work!

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jesuslop
Good idea!

