dmesg-errors — Kernel errors and warnings

A new kernel can bring driver or firmware problems: missing firmware files, devices that fail to initialise, filesystem warnings.

At a glance

ID	dmesg-errors
Category	Services
Needs root	yes (skipped without it)
Needs programs	dmesg
Compares with a snapshot	no
Options	1

What it checks

• Kernel messages at error and warning level since boot, grouped.

Findings

Severity	Finding	What to do
warning	N kernel error messages since boot	sudo dmesg --level=err -T; for missing firmware, install the matching firmware-* package.
info	N kernel warning messages since boot	sudo dmesg --level=warn -T.

Commands it runs

dmesg --level=err --notime
dmesg --level=warn --notime

Limitations

• Some kernel messages are harmless on particular hardware and appear on every boot. Silence them with ignore here, or in logs: ignore: to hide them in journal-errors too.
• The kernel ring buffer is limited; on a long-running system the oldest messages may be gone.

Options

Option	Default	Description
ignore	[]	Regular expressions; matching kernel messages are left out

Set them in the configuration file under checks: dmesg-errors:, or for one run with --check-option:

checks:
  dmesg-errors:
    enabled: true
    ignore: []

pydebuprep report --check-option dmesg-errors.ignore=VALUE

For a list option, --check-option replaces the configured list; repeat it to give several items.