Tainted kernel? System Failure, S - kernel running on an out of specification system

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1

Fedora WS 43 Gnome v49.
AMD Ryzen 5 7600
AMD 9070 XT
ASUS TUF Gaming B650M-E WIFI
32GB
kernel 6.17.12

While reporting an issue with steam, I noticed some errors in Problem Reporting. I don’t know if these issues are related but decided to open a new thread for it.

This is some of the info from the System Failure error.

not-reportable
A kernel problem occurred, but your kernel has been tainted (flags:GS). Explanation:
S - Kernel running on an out of specification system.
Kernel maintainers are unable to diagnose tainted reports.

reason
WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 1464764 at drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/amdgpu_irq.c:639 amdgpu_irq_put+0xa8/0xc0 [amdgpu] [amdgpu]

backtrace
WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 1464764 at drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/amdgpu_irq.c:639 amdgpu_irq_put+0xa8/0xc0 [amdgpu]
Modules linked in: wireguard curve25519_x86_64 libcurve25519_generic ip6_udp_tunnel udp_tunnel dummy uinput nf_conntrack_netlink xt_nat veth overlay xt_conntrack xt_MASQUERADE bridge stp llc xt_set ip_set xt_addrtype nft_compat tun snd_seq_dummy rfcomm snd_hrtimer sunrpc nf_conntrack_netbios_ns nf_conntrack_broadcast nft_fib_inet nft_fib_ipv4 nft_fib_ipv6 nft_fib nft_reject_inet nf_reject_ipv4 nf_reject_ipv6 nft_reject nft_ct nft_chain_nat nf_nat nf_conntrack nf_defrag_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_tables qrtr uhid bnep binfmt_misc vfat fat intel_rapl_msr amd_atl snd_hda_codec_alc662 intel_rapl_common snd_hda_codec_realtek_lib snd_hda_codec_atihdmi snd_hda_codec_generic snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_intel btusb edac_mce_amd btrtl snd_hda_codec btintel kvm_amd snd_hda_core btbcm snd_intel_dspcfg snd_intel_sdw_acpi btmtk kvm snd_hwdep asus_nb_wmi spd5118 asus_wmi snd_seq bluetooth irqbypass sparse_keymap snd_seq_device rapl platform_profile i2c_piix4 wmi_bmof k10temp pcspkr rfkill r8169 snd_pcm i2c_smbus snd_timer snd
 soundcore realtek joydev gpio_amdpt gpio_generic loop nfnetlink zram lz4hc_compress lz4_compress dm_crypt amdgpu hid_logitech_hidpp amdxcp i2c_algo_bit drm_ttm_helper ttm drm_exec gpu_sched drm_suballoc_helper drm_panel_backlight_quirks nvme polyval_clmulni drm_buddy uas nvme_core ghash_clmulni_intel video drm_display_helper usb_storage nvme_keyring sp5100_tco cec nvme_auth wmi hid_logitech_dj ntsync i2c_dev fuse
CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 1464764 Comm: kworker/u48:54 Tainted: G S                  6.17.12-300.fc43.x86_64 #1 PREEMPT(lazy) 
Tainted: [S]=CPU_OUT_OF_SPEC
Hardware name: ASUS System Product Name/TUF GAMING B650M-E WIFI, BIOS 3278 07/14/2025
Workqueue: amdgpu-reset-dev drm_sched_job_timedout [gpu_sched]

The OS is about 3 months old. I have no idea what any of the info means but my best guess is that it has to do with my motherboard. Definitely have buyers remorse, got nothing but complaints with this board, bluetooth and WiFi don’t work on Linux for starters due to MediaTek not proving drivers for Linux or something.

3

“Tainted kernel” doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem as such, it just means that the system configuration is something that the kernel developers consider non-standard.

Just guessing really, but a couple of ideas about why you might get that with your CPU:

  1. Have you changed any overclocking-related BIOS settings? (PBO, Curve Optimizer etc)

  2. Do you get any log messages about “RDSEED32 is broken”?

4

Oh that’s reassuring. I thought I might need to reinstall. I’ve reinstalled Fedora on my previous system so many times I have considered changing to a different distro.

  1. I don’t think so. If I get the error again I will consider looking into the bios.
  2. When running journalctl | grep “rdseed32", no output.
5

grep is case-sensitive, but journalctl has a -g (grep) option that can be case insensitive. Quoting man journalctl:

        -g, --grep=
          Filter output to entries where the MESSAGE= field matches the specified regular
          expression. PERL-compatible regular expressions are used, see pcre2pattern(3) 
          for a detailed description of the syntax.

           If the pattern is all lowercase, matching is case insensitive. Otherwise, 
           matching is case sensitive. This can be overridden with the --case-sensitive 
          option, see below.

Try journalctl -b --no-hostname --no-pager -g rdseed32 to check current boot.

6

Running journalctl | grep “RDSEED32” shows no output. journalctl -g RDSEED32 shows output but its just a bunch of boot sequences it looks like

–- Boot <alphanumeric> –-

7

FWIW, to be more precise, let me quote Tainted kernels — The Linux Kernel documentation :

“““The kernel will mark itself as ‘tainted’ when something occurs that might be relevant later when investigating problems. Don’t worry too much about this, most of the time it’s not a problem to run a tainted kernel; the information is mainly of interest once someone wants to investigate some problem, as its real cause might be the event that got the kernel tainted. That’s why bug reports from tainted kernels will often be ignored by developers, hence try to reproduce problems with an untainted kernel.”””

That document also explains how to check why the kernel tainted itself.

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8

The reason is kernel tries to disable an IRQ amdgpu_irq_put() that seems to have already been disabled WARN_ON(!amdgpu_irq_enabled(adev, src, type)) or have not been enabled at all. The root cause maybe a bug in kernel (something like race condition) or in your hardware.

This is hard to address, but if the system works without major issue related to amd graphics, then it should be safe to ignore. If really interested (and you can reproduce the warning consistently) , report this to kernel mailing list, the kernel developers may instruct you to trace what is happening underneath and help fixing the issue.

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