Got them low down dirty Kernel panic blues

October 23, 2008 9:55 PM

Mac OS X kernel panic shortly after boot on G4 iMac. How do I troubleshoot this?

Every time I boot my G4, it kernel panics after about 5 minutes. Doesn't seem to matter what's running. I tried reading the kernel panic log, but don't see anything helpful. What's the best way to go about getting this fixed? I'm a Mac noob, but am good with Windows and reasonably proficient with *nix and command line stuff.

posted by cosmicbandito to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Post the most recent entry in the panic log.
posted by Mikey-San at 10:21 PM on October 23, 2008

Anything attached to the G4 other than monitor/mouse/kb...hubs, ext drives, etc?
What OSX version?
posted by artdrectr at 10:27 PM on October 23, 2008

If you don't know how to do what Mikey-San asks, go to your Applications folder, in there you'll find a folder 'Utilities', and in there you'll find "Terminal"

Start that up, and type this command:

cat /var/log/system.log

It'll probably give you a lot of output, but you should be able to tell just about where a reboot is done, and just before that you should see some stuff related to the kernel panic. Post that here.
posted by DreamerFi at 3:42 AM on October 24, 2008

latest panic log entry:
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xFFFF0007): 0x700 - Program
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x000A8204 0x000ABB80
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x20EC9780)
PC=0x018B3280; MSR=0x00089030; DAR=0xE042C000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00483B14; R1=0x0CE03C90; XCP=0x0000001C (0x700 - Program)
Backtrace:
0x00483A88 0x002C3FE0 0x002EB730 0x0008BD60 0x00029234 0x000233F8
0x000ABEAC 0x00000000
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x467000
Exception state (sv=0x20F66A00)
PC=0x9000B348; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0xE00EF000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x9000B29C; R1=0xF007F830; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
*********

nothing else is attached to the machine. I do have it talking to a windows network share and have aliases set up to that share.
posted by cosmicbandito at 5:38 AM on October 24, 2008

Every time you boot up, even from your system disc?
posted by olecranon at 6:24 AM on October 24, 2008

I don't have a system disk. I have tried "safe boot" though, and it does the same thing.
posted by cosmicbandito at 6:59 AM on October 24, 2008

The
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x467000
line indicates a USB problem. I'd try unplugging your keyboard and mouse, and see if the systems dies in 5 minutes without them.
posted by Steve3 at 7:35 AM on October 24, 2008

If it doesn't die, what does that indicate? That I've got a bad mouse/keyboard? Will just replacing them work? The mouse has always been problematic, kind of jerky and hesitating, but I wrote that off to using OS X on older hardware.
posted by cosmicbandito at 8:31 AM on October 24, 2008

A mouse should be plenty smooth on a G4- between USB related kernel panic and the mouse being "jerky and hesitating", I think you're due to replace the mouse. I've run OS X on early G3 machines, and mouse movement has been plenty smooth.
posted by Steve3 at 8:38 AM on October 24, 2008

$15 logitech mouse fixed the problem. Machine runs smoothly now. Thanks everybody!
posted by cosmicbandito at 8:04 PM on November 23, 2008