Machine Check Events

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

Machine check exceptions refer to faults that the processor detects and signals.

Which will frequently be about faulty hardware.

Whether it's a warning or error varies.

You'll probably see more warnings, just because they will get logged in a still-running system, while various (fatal) errors hang the system, and at best be shown on screen at that moment.

You're probably here because you saw syslog entries like:

[Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged

For more detail, look at things like the mcelog package, and its logfile, e.g. /var/log/mcelog

These are often warnings, but often also warnings you want to know about.

For example, in my case the CPU was being throttled because it was overheating (~90C).

See also:

http://www.mcelog.org/faq.html

CMCI storm detected: switching to poll mode

See Linux_admin_notes_-_health_and_statistics#EDAC