Incomputing, anoops is a serious but non-fatal error in theLinux kernel. An oops may precede akernel panic, but it may also allow continued operation with compromisedreliability. The term does not stand for anything, other than that it is a simple mistake.
When the kernel detects a problem, itkills any offendingprocesses and prints anoops message, which Linux kernel engineers can use indebugging thecondition that created the oops andfixing the underlying programming error. After a system has experienced an oops, some internal resources may no longer be operational. Thus, even if the system appears to work correctly, undesirable side effects may have resulted from the active task being killed. A kernel oops often leads to akernel panic when the system attempts to use resources that have been lost. Some kernels are configured to panic when many oopses (10,000 by default) have occurred.[1][2] This oops limit is due to the potential, for example, for attackers to repeatedly trigger an oops and an associatedresource leak, which eventuallyoverflows an integer and allows further exploitation.[3][4]
The official Linux kernel documentation regarding oops messages resides in the fileDocumentation/admin-guide/bug-hunting.rst[5] of the kernel sources. Some logger configurations may affect the ability to collect oops messages.[6] Thekerneloops software can collect and submit kernel oopses to a repository such as the www.kerneloops.org website,[7] which provides statistics and public access to reported oopses.
A simplified crash screen was introduced in Linux 6.10, similar to theBlue Screen of Death on Windows.[8]
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