What causes Kernel crashes?

A

aluminum

Registered
Well, my dreams of a crash-proof mac are fading day by day. In the two weeks I've had it up and running, I've had 3 kernel crashes like this:

http://www.climbingturtle.com/archives/awwww_crap.jpg

What is causing this? A sofware app shouldn't cause the kernel to go down, should it? While OSX doesn't crash nearly as often as OS9, I'm finding that it does need restarting once or twice a day (it just grinds to a halt over time). Adding the random kernel crash once a week isn't really making me that confident in this OS. I had to go back to OS9 after 10.0 was such a dissapointement. I may end up having to wait until OSXI now!
 
Do you have additional RAM sticks in your G4? Sounds like bad RAM to me...or you have a REALLY unsupported third party hardware piece...
 
Well, I suppose it could be the RAM. I have 448 in it, so that might be it.

I do have a 3rd-party CD-Burner installed, though that isn't dependent on any drivers or anything.
 
On a well implemented UNIX-based OS, kernel panics are usually related to two problems:

- Hardware or driver problems, incompatibilities or badly-implemented features on the drivers, bad RAM, no space on the hard-drive, etc. If the hardware is faulty, your machine is faulty, that's it.

- OS-kernel bugs (problems in the OS itself), the OS, as all programs, has bugs in itself, so they can crash the system. Bear in mind that most if not all the bugs in the kernel are on the carbon and apple-specific parts, the other has been tested for many many years (plenty of kernel stuff).


UNIX has a modular design philosophy that tries to separate user data and code from kernel stuff. Simply there is no way to crash by using regular old software. On the old MacOS, a simple app could crash the whole system in a dozen ways.

Another thing is the interface-level crashes, when the user is unable to do anything as the Finder has completely crashed. One can usually ssh in and kill processes to get back to work.

dani++
 
1. make sure that your RAM is compatible... take out the ram that didn't come with your mac and run for a day or two.... see if that is cuplrit. (I had a 256mb chip that was causing crazy crashes in my windowserver and once i removed it, all was golden)

2. have you installed any software or drivers that required a kernel extension? (My kernel panic days could be blamed on a Kernel extension installed by my AGFA scanner drivers and the text "IOTOOLKIT" appeared in my panic screens as well.)
 
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