Linux kernel oops

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title: "Linux kernel oops" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["computer-errors", "linux-kernel", "screens-of-death"] description: "Serious non-fatal error in the Linux kernel" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_oops" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Serious non-fatal error in the Linux kernel ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Linux_2.4_oops_sparc.png" caption="Linux kernel oops on [[SPARC"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Linux-2.6-oops-parisc.jpg" caption="ASCII cow"] ::

In computing, an oops is a serious but non-fatal error in the Linux kernel. An oops may precede a kernel panic, but it may also allow continued operation with compromised reliability. The term does not stand for anything, other than that it is a simple mistake.

Functioning

When the kernel detects a problem, it kills any offending processes and prints an oops message, which Linux kernel engineers can use in debugging the condition that created the oops and fixing 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 a kernel panic when the system attempts to use resources that have been lost. Some kernels are configured to panic when many oopses ( by default) have occurred. This oops limit is due to the potential, for example, for attackers to repeatedly trigger an oops and an associated resource leak, which eventually overflows an integer and allows further exploitation.

The official Linux kernel documentation regarding oops messages resides in the file of the kernel sources. Some logger configurations may affect the ability to collect oops messages. The kerneloops software can collect and submit kernel oopses to a repository such as the www.kerneloops.org website, which provides statistics and public access to reported oopses.

A simplified crash screen was introduced in Linux 6.10, similar to the Blue Screen of Death on Windows.

References

References

1. Horn, Jann. (7 November 2022). "[PATCH] exit: Put an upper limit on how often we can oops".
2. "Documentation for /proc/sys/kernel/".
3. Corbet, Jonathan. (18 November 2022). "Averting excessive oopses". [[LWN.net]].
4. Jenkins, Seth. (19 January 2023). "Exploiting null-dereferences in the Linux kernel". [[Google Project Zero]].
5. "bug-hunting".
6. "DevDocs/KernelOops".
7. "kerneloops(8) - Linux man page".
8. Larabel, Michael. (19 April 2024). "Linux 6.10 Preps A Kernel Panic Screen - Sort Of A "Blue Screen of Death" - Phoronix".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::