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.
A machine check exception refers 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