Opened 14 years ago

Closed 12 years ago

#6131 closed enhancement (fixed)

Suggestion on bug reporting with KDL photos

Reported by: Guest One Owned by: mmlr
Priority: low Milestone: R1
Component: System/Kernel Version:
Keywords: Cc:
Blocked By: Blocking:
Platform: All

Description

Many people send photos of kernel debug screen to trac. These photos are barely readable sometimes. I think it would be easier to work with such reports if kernel debugger could represent part of it's message buffer in "photo friendly" format, displaying QR-code for example, or some similar way. Photo of QR-code could be converted back to text easily and it contains error correction data.

It's just a suggestion, I do not know if it is technically possible to implement such thing.

Attachments (3)

original-shot.png (205.8 KB ) - added by Guest One 14 years ago.
expirement on qr-codes: original
cellphone-photo1.jpg (323.1 KB ) - added by Guest One 14 years ago.
expirement on qr-codes: photo1
cellphone-photo2.jpg (215.3 KB ) - added by Guest One 14 years ago.
expirement on qr-codes: photo 2

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (12)

comment:1 by axeld, 14 years ago

Component: - GeneralSystem/Kernel
Owner: changed from nobody to axeld

It would be possible, yes.

comment:2 by pulkomandy, 14 years ago

QRCodes only allows for 255 characters... how many of them could we fit on screen ? That would'nt make a lot of data available.

in reply to:  2 comment:3 by Guest One, 14 years ago

Replying to pulkomandy:

QRCodes only allows for 255 characters... how many of them could we fit on screen ? That would'nt make a lot of data available.

I believe that QR code allows to store up to ~4K ascii characters or ~2k random binary data. ABOUT_QRCODES.

I agree, QR mark of reasonable size (for proposed usage) is limited by ~300-400 encoded symbols, but in many cases it could be helpful.

There are other 2D code standards, but AFAIK QR code is the best by information density.

comment:4 by phoudoin, 14 years ago

Yep, it's up to 4 296 ascii chars.

For those interested, here a QR encoder written in C, under public domain / CC0, which we could use even statically linked into kernel:

http://www.norisys.jp/libqr/

by Guest One, 14 years ago

Attachment: original-shot.png added

expirement on qr-codes: original

by Guest One, 14 years ago

Attachment: cellphone-photo1.jpg added

expirement on qr-codes: photo1

by Guest One, 14 years ago

Attachment: cellphone-photo2.jpg added

expirement on qr-codes: photo 2

comment:5 by Guest One, 14 years ago

Well, I've made some experimentation on real life data.

I took a real dmesg from my linux laptop, made a screenshot, encoded first 20 lines, combined it with screenshot and made two photos by two different cell phones. (Images attached to ticket)

Next, I cut QR codes from photos and tried restore text by online decoder.

Only the fourth sequence were restored from the first photo, but entire data were successfully restored from the second.

Conclusion: idea could have some limited use.

in reply to:  5 comment:6 by bonefish, 14 years ago

Priority: normallow

Replying to Guest One:

Only the fourth sequence were restored from the first photo, but entire data were successfully restored from the second.

Conclusion: idea could have some limited use.

I don't know what "sequences" you're referring to here, but in both pictures the text can be read well enough, so I don't really see the advantage of the QR codes, if they work worse than the status quo.

Moreover with the debug syslog feature the KDL output can be stored relatively easily to disk, with the only restrictions that (1) a FAT32 partition/USB stick is required and (2) that a warm reboot is possible.

comment:7 by scottmc, 14 years ago

Milestone: R1Unscheduled

comment:8 by diver, 12 years ago

Milestone: UnscheduledR1
Owner: changed from axeld to mmlr
Status: newassigned

comment:9 by mmlr, 12 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: assignedclosed

I've added that feature in hrev44275 and refined it some in the following revisions. The ReportingBugs wiki page has been updated to include a reference to the blog post explaining the details.

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