Guru Meditation

Guru Meditation started as an error notice displayed by the Amiga computer when it crashes. It is now also used by Varnish, a software component used by many content-heavy websites. This has led to many internet users seeing a "Guru Meditation" message (or the variant "Guru Mediation") when these websites suffer crashes or other issues. It is analogous to the "Blue Screen of Death" in Microsoft Windows operating systems, or a kernel panic in Unix. It has also been used as a message for unrecoverable errors in software packages such as VirtualBox and other operating systems (see Legacy section below). The term "Guru Meditation Error" originated as an in-house joke in Amiga's early days. The company had a product called the Joyboard for the Atari 2600 home video game console, a game controller much like a joystick but operated by the feet, similar to the Wii Balance Board. Early in the development of the Amiga computer operating system, the company's developers became so frustrated with the system's frequent crashes that, as a relaxation technique, a game was developed where a person would sit cross-legged on the Joyboard, resembling an Indian guru. The player tried to remain extremely still; the winner of the game stayed still the longest. If the player moved too much, a "guru meditation" error occurred. The alert occurred when there was a fatal problem with the system. If the system had no means of recovery, it could display the alert, even in systems with numerous critical flaws. In extreme cases, the alert could even be displayed if the system's memory was completely exhausted. The text of the alert messages was completely baffling to most users. Only highly technically adept Amiga users would know, for example, that exception 3 was an address error, and meant the program was accessing a word on an unaligned boundary. Users without this specialized knowledge would have no recourse but to look for a "Guru" or to simply reboot the machine and hope for the best.

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Related concepts (3)

Blue screen of death

The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), Blue screen error, Blue Screen, fatal error, or bugcheck, and officially known as a Stop error, is a critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows and ReactOS operating systems in the event of a fatal system error. The Blue Screen of Death indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely. Possible issues include hardware failure, an issue with or without a device driver, or unexpected termination of a crucial process or thread.

Kernel panic

A kernel panic (sometimes abbreviated as KP) is a safety measure taken by an operating system's kernel upon detecting an internal fatal error in which either it is unable to safely recover or continuing to run the system would have a higher risk of major data loss. The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems. The equivalent on Microsoft Windows operating systems is a stop error, often called a "blue screen of death".

Guru Meditation