[miffed]

Yesterday , a good friend of mine was telling me of a problem he was having with his (month old) MBP -
"a sort of grey curtain drops down , then I get told to hold down the power button for 3 seconds...."
I told him I had never had such an experience

.....Then , this morning - imagine my surprise when the very same thing happened to me !
Not having a clue what was occouring , I had a bit of a search on the net , and now know that what we experienced was "kernel panic" , and that is the most fatal crash you can experience on a mac
Then , this evening - my other "mac friend" tells me that he experienced this for the first time this weekend also !!
What is going on ? Is it all down to some kind of software update or something ?

.......it'll get you too you know ! .......you'll see !!

.......you're all doomed , DOOMED I TELL YOU !!!

[Hands0n]

I have not had this on any of my Macs so far (Mac Pro Tiger, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro Leopard).

I tend to run plain vanilla OS - normally eschewing OS enhancers and the like. The OS X tends to be solid as the proverbial rock. It is not bulletproof, but it has to be the most stable PCOS around.

So my first question to you and your mates would be are you all running anything in common over your OS? Anything that you all have on your machines that is additional to the OS. Think of applications also as these can sometimes add daemons that run in the background.

Also, are you [all] running any apps that are not yet updated for Leopard? That can be yet another cause, apps that make system calls that have moved off elsewhere in the OS.

Its all that kind of stuff really. As far as I know, so far, OS X Tiger and Leopard have no inherent instabilities that cause Kernel Panics.

That said, there is discussion out in t'Internet - here it could be a specific app (Azureus)
http://thelameleopard.wordpress.com/2007/11/03/leopard-kernel-panic-2/

http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/296237-leopard-kernel-panics.html

And of course, if all else fails http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=leopard+kernel+panics&btnG=Google+Search&meta= It'd be churlish not to :D

[Ben]

I've not had one in a looong time :D If I discount the lemon Mac mini I started out with (was replaced), I've had 1 kernel panic in what must be approaching two years and out of 12 Macs!

But then I don't have much third party stuff installed either...

It's always a good idea to fire up Disk Utility every once in a while and do Verify Disk. Assuming that's all ok, do a Repair Permissions as well.

[miffed]

How strange ! - I was expecting you all to say "yeah , me too"

But it seems its just another of those "miffed only" things like those wrong number calls and not getting petals thrown in my path whenever I talk to Vodafone :)

I'll see what apps we are running in common , The only one that springs to mind is Parallels - but I am half sure that the month old MBP only has CS3 on it , and nothing else , whereas I do not have CS3 on my laptop yet so that would draw a line under that one - I'll find out if he has indeed installed parallels yet - if he has , then I think we've found our culprit

[bsrjl1]

Damn you, I had one on my mini this morning. It's all your fault ;-) Actually it was the Airport software's fault...

[The Mullet of G]

I've seen a fair amount of greyed out kernel panic screens with OS X, but as I'm running it on PC hardware its to be expected, always good to see that I'm not alone though. :)

It does seem that Leopard has had a few issues since its release, with some of them being fairly serious like the data loss thing, personally I think Apple have dropped the ball with Leopard, as they only had to make it work with the hardware that they sold themselves, other OS's have to work with an almost infinite number of hardware configurations, Apple have in the past made good use of this advantage and produced hardware and software that worked almost flawlessly together. Its worth noting that not really being a Mac guy my opinion here probably isn't worth a whole lot of rubles. :D

[Hands0n]

But it seems its just another of those "miffed only" things like ......... not getting petals thrown in my path whenever I talk to Vodafone :)

Oh you're going to hate me :D Today I got a text message from Vodafone saying that my handset has been despatched to repair. I took it in late last night. They'll keep me advised of status by text until its ready for collection :D

[hecatae]

I've had a kernel panic on linux before, but only with really outdated hardware.

[Ben]

I've had a kernel panic on linux before, but only with really outdated hardware.
I guess that's a given, if you consider that anything made within the last few years is unlikely to work with Linux yet anyway ;)

*runs away*

[miffed]

I must say , I am more and more tempted to return to Tiger every day !

My latest niggle (after the Kernal panics) - is that safari is starting to pick and choose what it downloads and what it doesn't
It throws up the excuse "there is not enough dsk space" - and while I am aware I am down to my last 150gb or so , I feel this should be ample to download a 500kb file !
This is a problem I have noticed others are having , and the best advice on offer is 'don't use safari' - which simply evades the issue rather than sorting it !
.... That and the whole system seems slower ,buggier & far less stable than tiger did - in fact I'd say Leopard is probably on a parr with Windows for stability now - in fact , I have had far LESS trouble with Vista ! ,( though admittedly I don't use it half as much as Leopard )

[Ben]

That's disappointing :(

I'm yet to install a single copy of Leopard, but with all the iPhone fuss and the unthinkable delay in release I had a feeling that the new OS would take a little longer to mature than it should have when it was built on such a stable and remarkable OS (Tiger).

You're already on 10.5.1 I believe? I guess I'll be waiting for another couple of updates before I move.

Are you sure you want to keep using Safari? I love Firefox on the Mac, it really is brilliant, and with Google Browser Sync you can have all your bookmarks and even cookies sync'd across all of your machines that can run it!

Just out of interest... you did either a clean install or an archive and install, right? The 'upgrade' option is, so I'm told, a recipe for disaster due to the way old and new are merged. Also, keep on repairing permissions when you remember, and maybe even open Terminal and do a:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
to run the maintenance scripts that might not otherwise run if the Mac is off/sleeping a lot. That's the command in Tiger, at least.

[miffed]

cheers mate , I'll give those a try

I did an archive and install after reading about the various options available - all seemed fine to begin with , but now the whole system seems 'bogged down' like a month old XP installation - loads of little things , like when I plug my camera in , iPhoto hangs on start up and then needs a 'force quit' - although once it did actually start up Ok after about 5 minutes
I'd like to see these issues solved , but I really miss the rock solid nature of Tiger - and the only thing I'd miss from leopard is the photobooth stuff (as it keeps my little boy amused :D

[Ben]

How annoying! Is it the new version of iLife you're using? I'm still using the version-before-the-current-one, as I believe Tiger works well with it. Leopard may well prefer the new one. Not that it should really make any difference, of course...

[Hands0n]

Just to offer a counterbalance to the conversation ;)

I Upgraded my MBP and Mac Mini. The MBP has iLife08, the Mini has iLife06. Both are functioning correctly and without any problem. Also, I considered the other means of putting on Leopard but went for the Upgrade option as it was the easiest. If worst came to worst then I'd go for a clean install, there was no data to lose, only configuration.

What I have found is that Parallels needed to be re-installed over Leopard - it did not Upgrade very well, some strange behaviors. But once done it went back to working solidly. I think that there may well be some issues with installing an OS under the Apps, so a re-install of the Apps is never going to be an entirely bad idea. Certainly for those that are misbehaving since the OS was changed. Leopard is, after all, not a point release but a complete version change.

I have systematically gone and collected all of the latest versions of the Apps that I have on the systems. It is a bit of a chore, but does not take too long at broadband speeds. More and more I am finding specific Leopard versions coming out.

I'm on 10.5.1 of OS X, all updates applied as and when they were released. For me, apart from the Parallels issue the change to Leopard has been entirely painless. Next will be the Mac Pro - but I'm waiting for a long weekend to set aside some time for that job.

[chagle]

I have to say - I have been running with Leopard from day 1 -- Yes I was one of the original nerds Q'ing at the Apple store waiting for my free t-shirt and a copy of Mac OS X Leopard!

I have never had any issues like this -- I love all the new features. Yet to try TM, but then again my Firewire HDD is on my Christmas list.. with a few added hints to boot! :-)

I did a clean install admittedly but that's what I like to do. Have a good clear-out!

[chagle]

Just out of interest... you did either a clean install or an archive and install, right? The 'upgrade' option is, so I'm told, a recipe for disaster due to the way old and new are merged. Also, keep on repairing permissions when you remember, and maybe even open Terminal and do a:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
to run the maintenance scripts that might not otherwise run if the Mac is off/sleeping a lot. That's the command in Tiger, at least.

That command is also true of Leopard. I run these fairly often, the monthly.. probably too often! :-)

[miffed]

That command is also true of Leopard. I run these fairly often, the monthly.. probably too often! :-)


Right , so open terminal - type sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

...Asks for password .....

Then terminal no longer recognises the keyboard !:D



........ "it just works" my A*** !!

Probably related to the same reason you can no longer switch in boot camp with the new keyboards - you couldn't make this stuff up !

Thanks for the suggestions anyway folks ! :D

[miffed]

Ah , sorry , my mistake - I was expecting the cursor to move or something :rolleyes:

[Ben]

Welcome to the Terminal, aka real computing ;)

[The Mullet of G]

Welcome to the Terminal, aka real computing ;)


Pfft its a poor mans DOS. :p

[Ben]

* Speaks calmly to self: Must remain calm in the face of such overwhelming provocation *

:D

[Hands0n]

* Breaks out Clue Stick * :D :D

I got DOS in two minutes flat - but have been busting my brain getting my head around awk scripting!

[The Mullet of G]

* Speaks calmly to self: Must remain calm in the face of such overwhelming provocation *

:D

I thought you'd appreciate that one. :D