[atFault]

I've had machines kernel panic before, but never like this.

DP G5 2.0 GHz, Radeon 9800, 2.5/1.5/.5 GB RAM, 160GB HD, iSight, HK Soundsticks, Wacom Intuos 2, OS 10.3

I have been getting kernel panics all day, and currently i'm up to about 20. I have removed everything except the original stock ram of 512 M, and the Soundsticks and continue to get panics. At times I can run many applications for over an hour, and sometimes it panics before getting to the login screen. I have tried games, which should easily stress the processors and graphics card, but they don't seem to be the cause. When the panic causes data to spew across my desktop, I have seen both processors listed. Other than that most of information means almost nothing to me.

I haven't yet done a hardware test because I can't find my disk (it's a long story), but I have repaired permissions, and done fsck. There were many permission problems and fsck showed that the disk had no apparent problems.

Could permssions be messed up enough to cause kernel panics like this? Is it possible to run fsck and not find problems? From what I understand most kernel panics are caused by extensions that allow peripherals to interact with the unix base system. Is re-installing the OS an option or is possible for it to be hardware based? Would a defective processor be able to run intensive games for an hour, but cause a panic trying to get to the login screen?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Anything short of warranty work I can do myself, but I'm at a loss right now. I plan on borrowing a friends hardware test disk soon, but if there is anything I can do in the mean time to stabilize my ailing machine I would love to know.

atFault

[EH21]

Hi,

I have a G5 Dual with 2.5GB memory and I installed the 2Gb in 512k modules when i took it out of the box. I had lots of kernal panics and ran the hardware test which came up as a microprocessor a error instead of memory. But I took out and reinstalled memory and the problems went away for good and the hardware tests show a clean bill of health. The memory slots are really tight and its hard to get the modules totally seated on the first installation. Take em out and try again and see if it helps.
Eric

[Hydra]

Yeah, first I would run the Hardware Test disc and see what's up ASAP. If you can't get your hands on the disc I would pull the OEM RAM and swap in the stuff you added after and see if the OEM RAM is the problem. That should rule out the RAM, if it's not the RAM it could be something more major. Make sure you seat the RAM properly as stated elsewhere.

-Jerry C.

[atFault]

Here is my update:

I pulled everything except the stock 512Megs of ram and still got panics. I started to do the other things that might cause problems, but were still not likely to cause kernel panics. I fixed permissions and found a lot were wrong and many were system or root. After I fixed them everything went well.

I finally got my hands on the G5 Hardware Test last night and ran an extended test with the stock configuration and found nothing wrong. So far it has run 2 days with no problems, and I have added one of my two gigs of additional ram. Stable so far.

So, all my peripherals have been plugged in except my printer and no panics so far. The only thing that has reallly changed is fixing the premissions. I can't imagine permissions causing panics they way they were happening, but they stopped right after I fixed them.

atFault

[ckohler]

A couple of questions:

Do you sign in as root (or single-user mode)?
Do you run Classic?
Do you share your G5's drive with an OS9 machine?

[barbarian]

Just curious, how did you initially install the software on the G5... did you simply add to the stock config or did you copy stuff over from another drive using carbon copy cloner or something similar...

--

Anyway if the panics continue you should definitely bring that machine back in. In the stock configuration with no external hardware your machine should basically never panic.

[atFault]

Originally posted by ckohler:
A couple of questions:

Do you sign in as root (or single-user mode)?
Do you run Classic?
Do you share your G5's drive with an OS9 machine?

I only signed into single user mode to run fsck.
Classic did start up once, but I haven't used it.
I sometimes grab files from the G4 that I'm upgrading from, but that's about it.

Originally posted by barbarian:

Just curious, how did you initially install the software on the G5... did you simply add to the stock config or did you copy stuff over from another drive using carbon copy cloner or something similar...

--

Anyway if the panics continue you should definitely bring that machine back in. In the stock configuration with no external hardware your machine should basically never panic.

When I got the G5 I started it up, registered it and imediately installed Panther. It was a clean install, but I did not zero the drive. I am reinstalling software from downloaded disk images, or original disks. I did copy over my entire iTunes library, Mail.app folder and Safari library/safari data.

Still no panics so far and the only thing I really did was fix permissions.

atFault

[atFault]

The kernel panics came back today.

After over 4 days uptime I had another kernel panic. This was quickly followed by another 3 within 20 minutes. Booting into single user mode, fsck -f found some IO error and something else that it fixed, and checking permissions found no problem. It has since run for about 2 hours no problems now.

I don't get how it can run with zero problems, lots of apps running and every peripheral plugged in for days, and then panic while using Safari, iChat or just trying to load the login screen.

So far there does not appear to be a hardware problem. Could this simply be the OS? Would re-installing potentially fix it, even though fsck doesn't find any problems?

I really thought I was past them, but I guess not yet. Anything anyone has to suggest would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, atFault

[Gul Banana]

Post your /Library/Logs/panic.log here and we'll see if we can work out what's going on.

[atFault]

Thanks to all for the help and suggestions so far.

Right now I'm trying to get it to run long enough to access the logs. I understand it is possible to remote connect, but I've never done it and have no idea how to go about it. Instead I typed out what shows on the screen when it does actually make it far enough to show something. This output I got at the 'Loading Login Window' during startup:

System Failure: cpu=0; code=00000001 (Corrupt Stack)
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2AA6BA00)
PC=0x00093AE0; MSR=0x00001030; DAR=0xA0004CE4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x000939CC; R1=0xBFFFF570; XCP=0x00000098 (System Failure)
Backtrace:

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xbFFFF570

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception State (sv=0x2AA6BA00)
PC=0x00000500; MSR=0x00001000; DAR=0xA0004CE4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x90191298; R1=0xBFFFF690; XCP=0x0000008C (Premption)

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xbFFFF690

Kernel Version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39: PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517 .obj~1/RELEASE_PPC

Memory access exception (1,0,0)
ethernet access exception 00:0a:95:a7:b1:b0
ip address: 192.168.0.7

Waiting for remote debugger connection.

I'll get the logs as soon as possible.

Thanks again, atFault

[atFault]

I reinstalled 10.2.7 off the DVD and after restarting it wouldn't get past the grey Apple logo. Panic, after panic. I also can't seem to force target disk mode by holding T. I get the open firmware and the option of mac-boot or restart. If I choose mac-boot then it tries, rarely successfully, to get to my desktop. Also, after doing the archive install of 10.2.7 my user profile and home folder existed, but my password was gone.

Right now I am zeroing the drive with the disk utility on the Sofware Restore disk. It seems to have no problem running off the OS on the disk, but major problems with the installed OS.

The following is the panic.log that I managed to finally get off it:


Sun Oct 26 14:28:53 2003




Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 1): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x0000000000000098 PC=0x0000000000091118
Latest crash info for cpu 1:
Exception state (sv=0x2FD5F280)
PC=0x00091118; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x00000098; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00015B84; R1=0x1EAE3E40; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x0001B104 0x00015B84
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2FD5F280)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


panic(cpu 1): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:
Backtrace:
0x000833B8 0x0008389C 0x0001ED8C 0x00090800 0x00093A6C
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2FD5F280)
PC=0x00091118; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x00000098; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00015B84; R1=0x1EAE3E40; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x0001B104 0x00015B84

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC



*********

Mon Nov 3 13:02:38 2003




Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x00000000A0197440 PC=0x0000000000000300
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
PC=0x00000300; MSR=0x00001000; DAR=0xA0197440; DSISR=0x0A000000; LR=0x90191298; R1=0xBFFFF860; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFF860

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


panic(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000833B8 0x0008389C 0x0001ED8C 0x00090800 0x00093A6C
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
PC=0x00000300; MSR=0x00001000; DAR=0xA0197440; DSISR=0x0A000000; LR=0x90191298; R1=0xBFFFF860; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFF860


Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


*********

Mon Nov 3 13:09:25 2003




Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x00000000A0197440 PC=0x0000000000000300
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
PC=0x00000300; MSR=0x00001000; DAR=0xA0197440; DSISR=0x0A000000; LR=0x90191298; R1=0xBFFFF860; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFF860

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


panic(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000833B8 0x0008389C 0x0001ED8C 0x00090800 0x00093A6C
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2ACE9A00)
PC=0x00000300; MSR=0x00001000; DAR=0xA0197440; DSISR=0x0A000000; LR=0x90191298; R1=0xBFFFF860; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFF860


Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0:
Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC


*********


I'd love to be able to understand what is going on.

atFault

[nonhuman]

My dual 2 GHz G5 just came today and I'm having the exact same problem. In fact, as I started typing this it had a kernel panic while trying to zero the hard drive prior to reinstalling Panther. I'm about to try the RAM trick now.

[nonhuman]

Ok, so after that previous kernel panic while zeroing the drive, I removed and reinstalled the RAM. Then I discovered that the installer wouldn't let me install onto the drive, probably because it was partially zeroed. So I reformatted it, and it still wouldn't let me. So I began the process of zeroing it again hoping that if it fully zeroed i oculd reformat it and then it would work. In the middle of zeroing the drive, it KPed again. This is getting really damned annoying.

[atFault]

For anyone who this might help or those following this thread, here is my update.

Extended hardware test continues to show no problems. The zeroing of the drive went as expected and 10.2.7 from software restore disk went on no problem.

Then the restart...

Panic while doing disk repair prior to login
panic while starting login window.
panic, panic, panic...

I figure i'll get smarter than it. I figure since it boots off the startup disk fine and runs hardware test properly the problem is with the drive. So I decide to make a starup drive out of my iPod using the old G4. The iPod won't mount. Another computer, another cable, nothing will make the iPod mount. The G5 was the last computer the iPod was connected to. Related? Yet to be determined. The iPod is out of warranty so I opened it up to check the firewire connection to the logic board and everything is good.

Since I am out of hardware that I can try to make the G5 work it went to the shop yesterday morning. So far they have run their 'better' looping diagnostic test for 12 hours and it shows nothing wrong. However, it will not start for them either. I have this uneasy feeling since this is the first G5 they have worked on, but there has been no problems with the service before. They seem to be heading towards some thermal management problem, even though, from everything I've read, it seems to be doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing.

For now I read forums, and wait for another call to find out where this is going.

Ciao, atFault

[Cadaver]

Best of luck to ya. Sounds like some bad hardware in there somewhere

[nonhuman]

Well, I've made some progress in getting Panther to run on my G5. All I had to do to get it to install with no kernel panics was do an absolutely bare-bones install with only the essentials. That means no foreign languages, no printer drivers, no iApps, and no BSD subsystem. It seems to be working fine so far, except that it had one kernel panic while running Software Update, though it seems to be going fine the second time around. Hopefully it's actually working, because if it doesn't I'm going to have to take it in to the Apple Store.

[atFault]

The local shop, who is working on my machine, have been really good at updating me of the status. So far they don't really know what the problem is because all the test are coming up with no problems found. They still can't get it to boot up and are continuing to troubleshoot. It doesn't appear to be processors, so they have ordered a logic board.

I initially tried to get the G5 to run in target disk mode and it wouldn't do that. They think that this is another reason that the logic board is the problem.

I must say that I am extremely upset about owning this machine for 3 weeks now and only getting 3 days of use. Add that to the fact that every major Apple product I have purchased (seven in all) has had weeks of repair and part replacement. There is also the possibility that the G5 took out my iPod, which no longer has any firewire connectivity.

The saga continues.

Ciao, atFault

[atFault]

Another update...

The logic board finally came in and it took them a full day to install; something about a screw they couldn't remove on the power supply. I don't know if they had to drill it out or what, but they finally got the new logic board in there.

Then they ran the hardware test again. Failed. Again. Failed. Apple's hardware test doesn't say what is failing. They could keep replacing parts, but they don't even know what to change out.

I called Apple Customer Relations at this point and asked them to replace the machine. They said they need to talk to the tech. They called me back shortly after and left a message. It seems they may still want to salvage this machine, but I don't want it.

I'm a pro user, I pay pro prices and I expect a pro machine and pro service.

I await their call.

atFault