final edit: You want real logs instead? add this to your kernel command: drm.panic_screen=kmsg
Kinda funny, kinda neat.
I have no idea what the QR-code might reveal (I could not read it from this picture), so I pixelised it just to be sure.
FWIW I know exactly what happened and did not panic. To reproduce, boot your device with init=/bin/sh, then type exit.
CachyOS
The picture above is generated by Drm panic which is part of the kernel itself, or maybe a separate module. The data in the QR code is the kmsg log.
Not systemd, which wasn't running when that happened.
And it's been around for years; I guess I haven't had a kernel panic in a long time.
The QR stacktrace allows a method of copying the information off the machine, which may now be unable to function any longer.
If this error meant you can no longer boot to retrieve the error it’s goin to take you a lot longer to fix it because you have to now find the problem with no clues.
I get it. It’s more descriptive than an error message, and the few kilobytes you can cram into a QR code is great for that.
It sounded like other people were worried about data exfiltration, or disclosure to a third party. I haven’t had a chance to test this. Where does the QR code go?