Documentation/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.rst

4 The kernel will mark itself as 'tainted' when something occurs that might be
6 most of the time it's not a problem to run a tainted kernel; the information is
8 cause might be the event that got the kernel tainted. That's why bug reports
9 from tainted kernels will often be ignored by developers, hence try to reproduce
12 Note the kernel will remain tainted even after you undo what caused the taint
14 trustworthy. That's also why the kernel will print the tainted state when it
18 check the tainted state at runtime through a file in ``/proc/``.
24 You find the tainted state near the top in a line starting with 'CPU:'; if or
25 why the kernel was tainted is shown after the Process ID ('PID:') and a shortened
35 You'll find a 'Not tainted: ' there if the kernel was not tainted at the
42 the kernel got tainted earlier because a proprietary Module (``P``) was loaded,
47 Decoding tainted state at runtime
50 At runtime, you can query the tainted state by reading
51 ``cat /proc/sys/kernel/tainted``. If that returns ``0``, the kernel is not
52 tainted; any other number indicates the reasons why it is. The easiest way to
64 	See Documentation/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.rst in the Linux kernel or
65 	 https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.html for
70 reason that got your kernel tainted, as in this case you can find the number
77 	$ for i in $(seq 18); do echo $(($i-1)) $(($(cat /proc/sys/kernel/tainted)>>($i-1)&1));done
79 Table for decoding tainted state
83 Bit  Log  Number  Reason that got the kernel tainted
123      Kernel will be tainted if, for example: