How can I analyze a kernel panic (details inside)

[ZosoM3]

I'm running a dual boot with XP and Kalyway 10.5.1. I installed a fresh copy of XP on my first SATA drive. Then I plugged in a second SATA drive and installed Leopard on it with EFI, MBR, and vanilla kerner. After doing the chain0 dual boot steps, I booted into Leopard with no drama. After that it was just a few patches to get the enet and audio working.

 

It ran great... very snappy and usable. I installed a program to be able to write to my other NTFS drives (I want to be able to access the data in both XP and Leopard and I don't trust FAT32). All worked well untill.....

 

 

Until I copied over a 76GB iPhoto library to my Leopard drive. At first the USB transfer would just die and panic the kernel. Eventually the files off the USB drive using XP and copied from an NTFS drive into Leopard.

 

Shortly after I get a kernel panic. It happens whenever Leopard tried to run Spotlight on the drive. Spotlight worked fine before I copied the huge iPhoto library over. I disabled spotlight and my system is still up and running with no panics.

 

The console tells me nothing - I just get the message on the screen telling me to hold down the power button to reboot.

 

 

If it was just Spotlight that was my problem, I could live with it - but I think this is indicative of a larger problem and I want to get to the bottom of it. I want to trust my install of Leopard is solid before really making it my main OS. The crash is strange though because it isn't just due to high disk activity. My system runs a lot of hard drive traffice from Xbench just fine.

 

Since the console tells me nothing, is there an option of command that will give me more details of the kernel panic. Anyone know anything else about this type or error.

 

 

System:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L

Q6600 Quad Core @ 3.33GHz

4GB RAM

Several SATA and PATA drives

7600GT

[unregistered]

Yea, I get frequent kernel panics in leopard at random moments, which is why (as much as i want to) i cant make it my primary OS. As for you, which install are you using, and are you sure your cpu is stable? I have the same cpu, but not overclocked (2.4)

[frizbot]

Oh yeah. I'm getting kernel panics with Leopard.

 

" Help with Kernel Panics?, Logging? KP text? I could use some help."

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=54691

 

I'll track this topic as well, but I received no answers.

[CyBrian]

Hit F8 right before the Apple logo shows and you'll get to the Boot Options screen. Type -v in there and hit enter. From what I understand, if you boot in verbose mode it will show panics' full text. I could very well be wrong, though.

[socal swimmer]

he means kernel panic while working in the OS.

 

I too am curious, because I have been getting some and don't know what they are from....

 

EDIT::::

 

on my intel iMac, open console. go to the logs, on the side, and open /Library/Logs, and there is one called panic.log. I don't know if its there on hackintosh, but it may be....

[frizbot]

-v will show kernel panics that occur before the GUI is loaded.

 

I guess Apple found a way to save the panic log on x86 hardware, but it's only on their hardware perhaps. Maybe an EFI thing. Before it was in the PRAM on PPC machines. It isn't showing up on a regular PC that has kernel panicked using the old Darwin BIOS loader (anyone here using the newer EFI trick have a /Library/Logs/panic.log ?)

 

I think I saw a OSX86 kernel that called itself a "debug kernel". Otherwise, I'm not sure if there's a way on OSX86 then if Apple does it.

[socal swimmer]

-v will show kernel panics that occur before the GUI is loaded.

 

I guess Apple found a way to save the panic log on x86 hardware, but it's only on their hardware perhaps. Maybe an EFI thing. Before it was in the PRAM on PPC machines. It isn't showing up on a regular PC that has kernel panicked using the old Darwin BIOS loader (anyone here using the newer EFI trick have a /Library/Logs/panic.log ?)

 

I think I saw a OSX86 kernel that called itself a "debug kernel". Otherwise, I'm not sure if there's a way on OSX86 then if Apple does it.

 

I checked console on my hackintosh... no luck....

 

I am running the EFI trick, but no luck.

 

hmm.... debug kernel could help. idk.

[frizbot]

Yeah, saving the kernel log is difficult. It can't be written to the HD since the kernel has to work to do that -- there are filesystem things to work with while the kernel is unable to do so when stopped. It can't be written to RAM since that'll just be overwritten on a reboot or erased on shutdown. It can be written on top of the screen display, or saved to the battery-backed PRAM to be written to disk after a reboot. There's no PRAM in x86 machines, and they're not writing it to the display for aesthetic reasons...so I don't know how they're keeping the log unless it's a trick of EFI or maybe of the GUID filesystem thing (eg. keeping a fixed space on disk empty for panic logs), or they have something in the specialty hardware.

 

I'm still getting kernel panics in anything above JaS 10.4.8, but without the basic direction that the panic log can give, it's troubleshooting in the dark. Mine is a conflict with the Intel Pro 1000 ethernet card, and I have a separate thread to ask for help with that.

[ZosoM3]

As a followup, I found out that my panics were caused by my memory.

 

In another thread, a member suggested that I remove 1 of my memory sticks. I have 4, 1GB sticks. I did so and all my problems went away.

 

I'm still not sure if the problem is related to 4GB of total memory or 2 x 2GB in dual channel.

 

 

.. but I'm up and running perfectly and attached my XP disk and am running XP in parallels. The Hackintosh is perfect.

[nargot]

4gb ram will kernel panic your system eventually if you have the JMicron turned on in BIOS.

 

Either 4 gb ram and no PATA drives or 3gb and PATA is the only solution AFAIK

[wenmiester]

if you ever need to see a kernel panic dump from within OS X, do the following:

 

-boot your machine normally

-when you get to the OS X loader screen, hit a button

-type= "debug=0x100" (without quotation marks)

-enter OS X

 

with this debug mode enabled, if the OS has a kernel panic, instead of getting the grayed out screen and the "please turn off your computer," you'll get the actual verbose mode of the kernal panic dump, so you analyze it.

 

hope that helps

[socal swimmer]

if you ever need to see a kernel panic dump from within OS X, do the following:

 

-boot your machine normally

-when you get to the OS X loader screen, hit a button

-type= "debug=0x100" (without quotation marks)

-enter OS X

 

with this debug mode enabled, if the OS has a kernel panic, instead of getting the grayed out screen and the "please turn off your computer," you'll get the actual verbose mode of the kernal panic dump, so you analyze it.

 

hope that helps

 

yes, this is what we discovered in another thread.

 

Here is what your com.apple.Boot.plist looks like if you edit that in:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple$

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>debug=0x100 maxmem=2048</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>8</string>

<key>device-properties</key>

<string>2f0100000100000001000000230100000700000002010c00d041030a0100000...</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

Also, I used "maxmem" to limit the RAM to 2GB, so that it wouldn't panic but I could still have 4GB for vista (games).

[Uncle_Pinny]

4gb ram will kernel panic your system eventually if you have the JMicron turned on in BIOS.

 

Either 4 gb ram and no PATA drives or 3gb and PATA is the only solution AFAIK

 

On lots of mobo's the 4gb will cause a panic NO MATTER IF YOUR JMICRON IS ENABLED OR NOT.

 

I (along with some others) thought that the crash was due to this controller being enabled but after disabling it the problem still occurs. I 'think' this is due to (in my case) my 965P chipset. I run Vmware Fusion and as that takes up a great wodge of memory from the off it's quite easy to replicate the panic - panic occurs as soon as 3.2+gb of memory is in use (monitored via Activity monitor. Sounds like the same as is happening with ZosoM3....

[socal swimmer]

ok I just maxed out 4GB of ram on my GA p35 ds3p and it appears to be fine

 

I deleted JMicronATA.kext, and unplugged my IDE HDD.

[El Mindo]

Hi, I don't know if this is the same as my problem, but some times when I open a lot of tabs in Firefox, I get the "You need to restart your computer"- screen (kernel panic).

 

Installed kexts, and everything is running pretty much smooth, except this kernel panic, that keeps popping up quite frequent.

 

I'm running: OS X 10.5.6 with BOOT-132 and Chameleon bootloader

Gigabyte GA EP45-DS3

Intel Dual-Core 2,5GHz E5200

nVidia 9500GT 512MB

2x Kingston HyperX 2GB

 

I haven't yet been able to monitor via the Activity monitor, to see if Firefox even can run up that much memory. But it the only program it's been a curing inn, especially when I try to open a lot of tabs at the same time.

 

So please, anyone got an answer or an idea?

 

Is this problem with ram, that you're discussing only valid for 4 GB? Since ZosoM3 says he uninstalled one of his four memmory sticks. (4x 1GB) And solved the problem.

Would this also mean that I could for instance double mine to 8 GB (4x 2GB), and have it solved too, if mine is the same problem? (I need min. 4 GB to edit HD in Final Cut, so a downgrade/uninstall would not work for me)

[Beerkex'd]

It's easy to determine if the problem is caused by having more than 2GB RAM.

 

Just boot with maxmem=2048 and try to make it crash.

 

The problem is not with the RAM itself, it's a problem with 64-bit addressing and some kernel extensions.

 

If you're using JMicronATA, NForceATA, VIAATA or ATIATA kernel extensions on your system, read this:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=127611