Linux 6.12 To Optionally Display A QR Code During Kernel Panics

Submitted today via DRM-Misc-Next to DRM-Next for staging ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window in mid-September is optional support for displaying a QR code within the DRM Panic handler infrastructure when a Linux kernel panic occurs.

As written about back in early July, there's been work for showing a QR code error when Linux DRM Panic "Screen of Death" errors occur. This can be much more convenient and user-friendly when a panic occurs. Right now kernel panic messages tend to get chopped off the screen's display when being output and a QR code is able to capture a lot of information that may otherwise be hard to capture from the simple text-based output.

This isn't the first time that QR codes for kernel errors have been thought of as it was discussed years ago and other operating systems have done so as well.

With today's drm-misc-next pull request that QR code support for DRM panic has been queued for introduction in Linux 6.12 when using the DRM Panic handler on supported drivers.

This QR code support is written in the Rust programming language and thus the Rust kernel build must be enabled for the support. The support is guarded by the DRM_PANIC_SCREEN_QR_CODE Kconfig build switch. There is also support for specifying a QR code base URL and QR version for the amount of debugging data that can be archived.