Kernel instability, 10.2.5

B

billbaloney

House pianist
I don't suffer total kernel panics per se (the international screen of death and all that), but I've had massive instability problems with applications -- enough, and democratically enough across applications, that it's definitely a system-wide problem.

Which leads me to the kernel, that being the most obvious place to look. Has anyone else experienced or read about general kernal stability problems since updating to 10.2.5? It's really starting to bum me out.

The worst cases: Toast Titanium is a no-go, and Sherlock also crashes every time. Like, every single time.
 
I've been running 10.2.5 since almost the day it came out with no problems at all. Our webserver kernal paniced the other day but that was the first time, perhaps ever, and it's not running 10.2.5.... maybe .2 or .3.
 
If you are not getting kernel panics then it is most likely not the kernel. Rather you most likely have some corrupted shared libraries or the like on your box. One of the first things you need to do is check to make sure that the disk is in good order. Boot from the CD and do a verify and repair on your boot volume. I bet you'll find lots of errors.

-Eric
 
Wow. I decided you had a good idea there, so I tried booting from Drive 10 -- kernel panic. I tried booting from the factory 10.2 OS X Install disc to use disk utility -- international screen of death.

I booted the laptop into firewire target disk mode and looked at it from another computer's disk utility. Couldn't access the drive because of permissions on the device.

Huh? I've never seen that before -- then again, in my 2.5 years of using OS X, this was the first time I put a machine in target disk mode and tried running a utility on it from another machine. It's possible that the permissions are just foreign to the master machine because it assumes that everything's supposed to correspond to its own user/group setup, but I wasn't about to mess with that.

First question: should I be able to run disk utility with this setup? Both machines are 10.2.5.

Second question: Given a major symptom here is inability to boot from any CD without descending into total panic, there must be a deeper device problem in addition to whatever else is happening. Theories?

Background: I bought this 1 GHz G4 laptop in the beginning of April. It was new, but with a pre-installed OS. Nothing looked funny, so I began customizing.

Perhaps it's time for a total wipe...oh boy, bummer.
 
I never had a panic booting from a CD. I suggest checking the permissions often, but if you can't boot from the install CD to do so, then I'm not sure how else it can be done. I check mine once a week, and often there is 1 or 2 permissions wrong.
 
Kernel panics booting from cds would lead me to suspect hardware (RAM?) problems.

Doug
 
RAM trouble is an interesting idea. I just ran TechTool on this machine and the RAM tested out fine, but maybe what I should do is try removing the top chip and try booting from a disk again.
 
Never underestimate the trouble of bad RAM!

Hi. I had a problem similar to you (see the post 'my mac panics'). It turned out to be the a bad RAM chip! TechTool found nothing, but still... With fresh RAM my Pismo is all good once again!

Good luck!
 
I must admit that since 10.2.5 I have had many "International Screen of Death" messages. I'm afraid that O've also updated my memory a few days before so am not sure where the problem came from. It does seem to be worse when I have my scanner or multiple USB devices active. TechTool also, as descibed earlier has found nothing....but I'll keep on looking...I guess the next thing to try will be going back to the original RAM chips...just thought I'd let you know...
 
Try moving the memory that came with the computer to slot 1 if it isn't already there. I had that problem when i installed a 512 chip way back with 10.1.5, and my system crashed too many times to count. i also removed the harddrive that came with my computer for a larger capacity Maxtor. Not sure which was the cause but my system would be up for days, no problems until i update my system, forcing me to Install in place and run the combo updates.
 
I haven't had more than 2 kernel panics in my OS X history and in the past 2 work days I've had 5!!!

It seems that when i try to edit a file on our live server, in dreamweaver, it will work fine for a while then BAMB the screen goes gray and it asks me to restart. I then run fsck and it fixes some notes and the volume bitmap ... or something like that.

So i try to remember to copy the files to the desktop, edit them, then copy back. I know it didn't do this in 10.2.4
 
Wow -- that's stunning. Major kernel problems there! I actually heard that 10.2.6 is supposed to address some kernel instability issues -- anyone else read about that?
 
The 10.2.6 update was just released and is supposed to address some Kernel panic issues in 10.2.5, and some USB hub compatibility issues. Somewhere, on another list, I saw a notice about USB hubs and 10.2.5. I was having some trouble with some of my apps, so I disconnected the Belkin powered USB hub I was using, and that fixed it. 10.2.6 may address that issue.
 
Originally posted by twister
I haven't had more than 2 kernel panics in my OS X history and in the past 2 work days I've had 5!!!

It seems that when i try to edit a file on our live server, in dreamweaver, it will work fine for a while then BAMB the screen goes gray and it asks me to restart. I then run fsck and it fixes some notes and the volume bitmap ... or something like that.

So i try to remember to copy the files to the desktop, edit them, then copy back. I know it didn't do this in 10.2.4
Click to expand...

I'm using DW MX on 10.2.5 with no problems editing directly on the server. How are you accessing the server? is it a windows share, NFS, mapped drive?

I've had no problems editing to win2k based servers as well as a linux box.
 
I connect with apple+k and i type in the intranet IP. I connect to a NT machine running CFusion 5 i think.

I don't really know the details.
 
The message I have when an app crashes is basically the same thing (a "bad access" exception) every time:

Mail:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x2d424537

Sherlock:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000
 
I have had only 2 kernel panicks, ever. One was in 10.2.5, I don't remember what I was doing, something relatively innocuous like browsing a web site. Random occurance, hasn't happened since.
 
I have noticed 10.2.5 has problems as well and that 10.2.6 (so far) is more stable. Being on an older Mac (Blue & White) I have noticed a trend that this platform is always unstable when Apple releases new versions/patches to the OS that adds some functionality (versus just fixing whats there). I think these older machines are on the low end on the totum pole for testing in Apple's Q/A department and tend to be fixed later (or at all, i.e. having a SCSI card that came with the system that is no longer supported). In the Window's world, getting the latest patch always seems to make you more stable. In the Mac world, one has to be a bit chooser based upon their situation (which is kind of pathetic since PCs can be configured 1000s of ways and Macs are a vitually closed system other than their PCI and memory expansion slots).
 
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