towerbud311 Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 Hi all... I recently did a fresh Mountain Lion install that went pretty smoothly. However, in day to day use, I get random KPs. So far, the only commonality I have been able to somewhat determine is I think I have had an active VPN connection (using the built-in Cisco VPN client) up and running, or in the process of disconnecting. Usually the VPN client works fine, but once or twice a day, I get the wonderful grey screen and notice to power on/off my system. So my main question here is how can I get the output of what caused the panic? I know on a normal Mac, it gets written to a special PRAM and ends up in a log file upon reboot. On the hackintosh, that does not happen. I've read adding a debug flag (<string>debug=0x100</string>) to the com.apple.Boot.plist should make the KP info display on the screen instead of the polite "Your computer needs to be reset..." message, but this has not worked. Any suggestions on how to get the panic cause to end up in a log file and/or displayed on the screen? Secondarily - any ideas on what could be causing the random KPs? I know faulty memory is usually a root cause, but I was using this same hardware on SL for a couple months without any issues. System Details: -Gigabyte X58-UD3R v1.0 -12 Gb RAM (3x 4Gb sticks) -Kingston SSD -Nvidia GTX260 Thanks for any insights... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HUSABER Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 Post your Kernel Panic screen here,how to help withouth this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockinron_1 Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 boot with -v if you installed any kexts made by the voodoo team delete them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 14, 2012 Author Share Posted August 14, 2012 Husaber - sorry, that is the issue. The panic is not during bootup, but during normal use. I cannot get the panic screen to show anything but the default "Your computer needs to be restarted..." screen. Is there a way to change this behavior so it dumps the panic info instead? rockinron_1 - I previously was using the voodoohda kext because historically that is the only way I could get sound working, but I changed to the legacy alc889 kext, which now seems to be working fine. The -v option will just show me verbose output on bootup, correct? It won't show me any details about a panic that happens during normal use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iFIRE Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 look in console app for this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockinron_1 Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 rockinron_1 - I previously was using the voodoohda kext because historically that is the only way I could get sound working, but I changed to the legacy alc889 kext, which now seems to be working fine. The -v option will just show me verbose output on bootup, correct? It won't show me any details about a panic that happens during normal use? Wrong. It will display the standard verbose panic output when it happens regardless of whether the system is booted or booting. Edit: add it to your org.chameleon.boot.plist if it's an intermittent error so the system will automatically boot in verbose mode without you having to type -v. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 14, 2012 Author Share Posted August 14, 2012 iFire - The Console app does not show any panic output, unfortunately. It shows a normal entry from whatever application last had an event, and then the next line is the bootup process kicking off. Looking further down in the Console output, there is no reference to a panic. rockinron_1 - I will try adding the -v option, thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding that it applies to more than just the bootup process. Thanks for all the responses guys. I will let you know if/what the -v option outputs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 15, 2012 Author Share Posted August 15, 2012 OK, so as rockinron_1 schooled me on, the -v option indeed dumped the panic info when the system died. I attached a screen shot of the panic. From the debug output, it mentions ntpd. Could a process this simple cause a panic, or is my rookie-ness showing through and I am reading the output wrong? Thanks again for all the help so far. Any additional insight or suggestions are greatly appreciated... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockinron_1 Posted August 15, 2012 Share Posted August 15, 2012 I believe you've read it correctly but I can't much other than fix permissions & see if the same panic happens in safe mode (-x). As a side note why are you using the mac pro 3.1 smbios with that system? What was your install method? (I'm assuming not vanilla...) Maybe more relevant: what Ethernet kext did you use? Can you find an alternative to try or try the system without it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 15, 2012 Author Share Posted August 15, 2012 I ran fix permissions about an hour before the panic I attached earlier, so not sure if a (forced) reboot will have a more positive effect or not. For install, I went the easy route and used ######. Perhaps I applied the wrong smbios during post-install; I honestly do not recall, but I can look to update it. Lastly, the Ethernet kext possibility crossed my mind too. I am 99% sure I applied AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext v2.0.6 from ######. Do you think a different one would perhaps yield better results? Oh, wow. I did not realize there was an automatic filter on the name that is not to be mentioned. I literally just read about the credit issues earlier today regarding some redistributed aspects of that one install method/tool which cannot be mentioned here. Anyway, that is what I used. In hindsight, I would have gone a more manual route had I been up to speed... Regardless, I'd like to try and avoid a total reinstall, so any advice is greatly appreciated... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockinron_1 Posted August 15, 2012 Share Posted August 15, 2012 Well strictly speaking *beast stuff isn't supported here but my advice would be to remove the ethernet kext and see if the system is stable without it. Then try a different one (Lnx2Macs one might be a good alternative). Given ntpd is in the panic that would be my educated guess. Unfortunately with the *beast stuff there's no way to know exactly whats been changed which makes diagnosis harder. Use chameleon wizard to install the most compatible smbios for your machine, the 3.1 one is rather old now (especially if your on ivy bridge - not sure if you've mentioned what your cpu is...): http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=257464 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 15, 2012 Author Share Posted August 15, 2012 Thanks for the fantastic advice rockinron_1. I must have missed the chameleon wizard becoming such a great looking tool. I am going to dive in now with it. I have an original i7 920 LGA 1366, so yes, the smbios is wrong at 3,1. I will change that first, then tackle the Ethernet kext and see if that helps. I'll post back with results after a day or two of stability (hopefully). Thanks again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
towerbud311 Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 Just to post a quick update... It seems just changing the smbios to 4,1 did not resolve the issue as I had another ntpd panic the next day. I then switched to the Lnx2Macs Ethernet kext as rockinron_1 suggested. So far, so good after a few days worth of regular use. No KPs since then (knock on wood). Thanks again for everyone's help... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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