QR codes for Linux kernel crash reports

The Linux kernel mailing list discusses an interesting idea. Instead of a heap of oops lines on the screen in the case of kernel panic, it is proposed to output a QR code in which the information necessary for debugging is encrypted. It is also convenient to publish QR codes on Bugzilla or in mailing lists for discussion of failures.



The task is to present the error information in a more understandable form. There are two options: either directly code the source text lines, or encode the URL on Kernel.org with an error message. In the second case, you can significantly reduce the size of the image. To fit text into a URL of an acceptable size, they suggest using gzip compression.





This QR-code of 600x600 pixels contains the text of 3134 characters. It can be compressed up to 1953 characters , but the QR code of 147x147 pixels will still not fit on the screen in the textmode 80x25 mode

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Judging by the discussion, QR codes will definitely not be able to be implemented in the nearest Linux 3.15 kernel, but they can make it in time for the next version if they solve a couple of problems. Of course, the option can be turned on / off as desired.



By the way, a similar feature was added to Haiku (BeOS clone) more than a year ago .