"Last July, Andrew Rodland added logic to make a server's LED's blink in morse code following a kernel panic, in response to comments he read in the function 'panic_blink'. Tomas Szepe has dusted of this code and ported it to the 2.5 development kernel, receiving a mixed reaction.
"Dave Jones suggested the patch had little merit as there were far easier ways to debug a kernel panic, to which Alan Cox replied, 'While morse code may be a little silly the general purpose hook it needs to be done cleanly is considerably more useful.' Andi Kleen, the author of the comment that suggested morse code, had this to say:
"'I admit I was the on[e] who got this ball running by suggesting it 'as an exercise for the reader' in the original panic blink code, but guys this was intended as a JOKE, not serious. Please get over it and don't merge that silly code...'"
