canadrian Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 In the last couple days I've been experiencing a LOT of kernel panics. Seven or eight a day, probably. The only things I have changed recently are: - upgraded OS X ZFS binaries from 102A to 111 - switched from Transmission to Azureus - upgraded HDDs in ZFS pool from 320gb to 750gb - Installed a second 2gb stick of RAM Since experiencing these crashes, I have downgraded ZFS, switched back to Transmission, and I kinda doubt the bigger drives would cause kernel panics. I read in another thread about people having panics with >3GB RAM, but that was on some sort of AMD boards I believe. I have an Intel DG31PR with 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo and 2x2GB Kingston DDR2 667 RAM. Do you guys think it's the increased RAM causing the panics? Anecdotally I want to say they seem to coincide with the torrent programs running, and I wonder if that's because they are using more RAM than the base system plus basic apps. If the RAM is the problem, does anyone know of a pretty solid solution that might apply to the Intel board, or am I stuck with returning a stick of RAM to the store and running on 2GB? Many thanks in advance, Canadrian Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
00diabolic Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 32bit os its an addressing issue. You can limit the amount of memory with a kernel flag. See: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=99891 I'm not sure if the system will use the extra ram you dont specify for apps or not but you can at least try to push the number up until you hit the point that the kernel starts panicing again. You can start at =3.5gb and move up from there. I believe its the actual 4gb number that does it. Like 3.99gb might work. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715755 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Bond Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 Intel boards like that (in adition to certain nForce boards like my own) are known to have issues with 4gb of RAM. Leopard is a x64 OS - the problem lies in the kernel being used, I believe. 4gb of RAM caused the worst stability issues, particularly with transmission, as you noted. Dropping to 3gb made things a little better, but I would still panic during intensive activities. I believe 2gb is what'll work best for you (as it does for me, at the moment). The kernel flag is "maxmem=2048" or whatever value you'd like. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715772 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azurael Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 Erm. I don't suppose that board has a JMicron ATA controller on it? If so, try disabling it/the extension which runs it (either AppleVIAATA or JMicron.kext) and see if it fixes your panics... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715774 Share on other sites More sharing options...
canadrian Posted April 19, 2008 Author Share Posted April 19, 2008 Wow thanks guys, these are some pretty quick replies. - I'll try the boot flag for about 3.5gb or something, see if that solves it - If I can't get over 2gb to be stable, screw it I'll return a stick of RAM and get some money back. - I had a good look through my BIOS and I can't really find any setting related to the SATA controller at all, let along anything to do with JMicron. At any rate, I have 9 drives in this beast, and I don't really have the luxury of disabling any controllers! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715778 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezilagel Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 I am also having problems with the 4GB of ram. I ran memtest for OSX and it would crash. So I figured I had some bad ram. Bought new ram and am having the same problem. I ran memtest from a linux distro and there wasn't any problems. Here is my setup. Any kernel updates or fixes for this yet? Seems like a huge problem if we can't run more than 2GB of ram on these hackintosh's. P5KC Asus 2x2GB DDR2 800 8800 nvidia Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715840 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headrush69 Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 I had a good look through my BIOS and I can't really find any setting related to the SATA controller at all, let along anything to do with JMicron. At any rate, I have 9 drives in this beast, and I don't really have the luxury of disabling any controllers! For me it was just making sure I was in AHCI mode. That solved all the >3GB memory related issues. (All 6 ports recognized) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-715853 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shakko Posted April 20, 2008 Share Posted April 20, 2008 Ah... so I'm not the only one getting getting these kernel panics. I go them all the time too, but they seem to have relaxed since I set my SATA mode to ACHI. I've just now set maxmem to 2048-- I'll see if that stops them. Most of my panics happen when I do anything cpu intensive. For example, I got it once when I was extracting a 3gb file. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-716693 Share on other sites More sharing options...
canadrian Posted April 20, 2008 Author Share Posted April 20, 2008 Yeah, since I did maxmem=2048 I haven't had a single crash. I might have a look for the AHCI thing, but as I said I couldn't see any SATA options at all in the BIOS. As for CPU-intensive tasks causing the panics, I believe the real problem is that those tasks are also memory-intensive, pushing our machines beyond the magical 2gb threshold. Copying to the RAIDZ array, using torrent programs, etc. did it for me, but I suspect anything that sucks up enough RAM to push beyond 2gb would cause the same problem. It's a bit of a shame, as just like any other OS, OSX really does like as much RAM as it can get. You guys think there is likely to be any fix for this issue in the future, or should I just go ahead and return that RAM to the store? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-716700 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shakko Posted April 21, 2008 Share Posted April 21, 2008 I've read from the #hackint0sh channel that the problem may be caused by certain motherboards. It doesn't seem to happen when you have 2GB or 6GB/8GB ram.. or so I've heard. I'm going to try with 6GB soon once I get my FireStix RMA'd. As far as ACHI is concerned.. Keeping it on takes MUCH longer to boot into.. I have two installs of OSX on my machine (one on a SATA drive, and another on an IDE) -- with IDE enabled, it loads the SATA version. With ACHI enabled, it loads the IDE drive version. Very odd. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-717712 Share on other sites More sharing options...
slashack Posted September 23, 2008 Share Posted September 23, 2008 For those with AppleVIAATA: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=127611 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-902325 Share on other sites More sharing options...
acacioas Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 In the last couple days I've been experiencing a LOT of kernel panics. Seven or eight a day, probably. The only things I have changed recently are:- upgraded OS X ZFS binaries from 102A to 111 - switched from Transmission to Azureus - upgraded HDDs in ZFS pool from 320gb to 750gb - Installed a second 2gb stick of RAM Since experiencing these crashes, I have downgraded ZFS, switched back to Transmission, and I kinda doubt the bigger drives would cause kernel panics. I read in another thread about people having panics with >3GB RAM, but that was on some sort of AMD boards I believe. I have an Intel DG31PR with 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo and 2x2GB Kingston DDR2 667 RAM. Do you guys think it's the increased RAM causing the panics? Anecdotally I want to say they seem to coincide with the torrent programs running, and I wonder if that's because they are using more RAM than the base system plus basic apps. If the RAM is the problem, does anyone know of a pretty solid solution that might apply to the Intel board, or am I stuck with returning a stick of RAM to the store and running on 2GB? Many thanks in advance, Canadrian I had this problem either, and for me, there was a BIOS upgrade on Intel's site (for DG31PR) that solved the problem.. (It was happening on Vista too, but there, the system wouldn't even boot..) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100314-kernel-panics-because-of-4gb-ram/#findComment-989875 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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