My frist crash/freeze with the MacBook Pro

Sun, 2009.03.01 - 01:16 — müzso

Unfortunately I just had a unpleasant experience: my Mac crashed/froze while I was watching a movie in VLC player. In the middle of the screen the following message appeared (indicating a kernel panic): "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button." (And the same message appeared in French, German and in a language that I suppose was Japanese. See attached image.)

After the restart I got the "Send report" (to Apple) prompt/window where I could also check the error message from the crash (it contained CPU registers, etc., ... nothing that would tell me what really happened). Here's the dump (which I've also found in the Console app in /Library/Logs/PanicReporter/2009-03-01-003633.panic):

Sun Mar  1 00:36:33 2009
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x001A9C68): Kernel trap at 0x0019ba20, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x0000000a, CR3: 0x00fbc000, CR4: 0x00000660
EAX: 0x0000000a, EBX: 0x00000001, ECX: 0x00000001, EDX: 0x0000000a
CR2: 0x0000000a, EBP: 0x28dd7b28, ESI: 0x00000008, EDI: 0x00000008
EFL: 0x00010002, EIP: 0x0019ba20, CS:  0x00000008, DS:  0x04b80010
Error code: 0x00000000



Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x28dd7928 : 0x12b4f3 (0x45b13c 0x28dd795c 0x1335e4 0x0) 
0x28dd7978 : 0x1a9c68 (0x464700 0x19ba20 0xe 0x463eb0) 
0x28dd7a58 : 0x1a038d (0x28dd7a70 0x0 0x28dd7b28 0x19ba20) 
0x28dd7a68 : 0x19ba20 (0xe 0x22ae0048 0x10 0x5160010) 
0x28dd7b28 : 0x19f96c (0x1 0x51654f0 0x1 0x541754) 
0x28dd7ba8 : 0x178029 (0x8 0x3c69b 0x0 0x1) 
0x28dd7c88 : 0x17837c (0x729ee38 0x0 0x0 0xb3000) 
0x28dd7ce8 : 0x16c34f (0x729ee38 0x0 0x0 0xb3000) 
0x28dd7dc8 : 0x16cec7 (0x4fbda2c 0x1d909000 0x0 0xb3000) 
0x28dd7e68 : 0x13a929 (0x4fbda2c 0x212 0x28dd7e98 0x3747a2) 
0x28dd7ea8 : 0x3745c0 (0x45d1298 0x1 0x0 0x28dd7ec8) 
0x28dd7ed8 : 0x3746fb (0x45d1298 0x7ebccd4 0x1 0x0) 
0x28dd7f08 : 0x3752ba (0x48aaba4 0x7ebccd4 0x28dd7f38 0x0) 
0x28dd7f38 : 0x3753e3 (0x48aaba4 0x1 0x48b48f8 0x3f) 
0x28dd7f78 : 0x3df460 (0x48aaba4 0x50161a0 0x50161e4 0x1c03) 
0x28dd7fc8 : 0x1a0887 (0x5161180 0x0 0x1a30b5 0x51654f0) 
        Backtrace continues...



BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Path Finder



Mac OS version:
9G55



Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:37:00 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBookPro2,2

I was thinking what might have caused the crash. Something must have changed recently. The only thing I can think of is my ISP. I've recently switched from my old ADSL service to a cable TV based ISP. The new connection provides lot faster upload and download. Not much before the crash I've started download of a few torrents and I've set a download limit of 2 MB/s. I've downloaded stuff at that speed only once or twice before, but only for very short periods. Now I was about to download a few gigabytes (~10) and the sustained 2MB/s load on the network driver might have triggered a bug. The problem might also be related to my tinkering with the network driver. I've replaced the Leopard Ethernet drivers with the Tiger drivers to retain "spoofability" of the MAC address. I've read here and there that some people had stability issues with their Ethernet drivers at higher speeds. It is possible that by going back to the Tiger drivers, I've just introduced back the old bug. I'll test this hyphotesis further.

P.S.: I should also mention that I'm not a complete newbie to Macs. I've had my MBP now for over 2 years and never had a crash before. There're smaller issues (a hickup here and there), but no major freeze like this one.

Attachment	Size
restart_message.jpg	48.32 KB

Comments

Sun, 2009.03.15 - 07:27 — pengekcs.com (not verified)

It happens

Hello!

It just happens time to time (rarely if ever). You should be happy that your system works correctly as Apple had its share with faulty nvidia GPU's in the past year. Mine did that like yours a few times, then one day the display went blank for good. After the warranty expired a week or so. Lots of phone calling, etc went by when finally I did not need to ditch 200,000 HUF for a new main board in my MBP, but they replaced it under a 'revised warranty'.

Details here:
http://www.pengekcs.com/2008/10/15/macbook-pro-nvidia-chip-problem-solved/

Sun, 2009.03.15 - 09:42 — müzso

Re: it happens

Thanks for the feedback. My MBP is an older generation and has an ATI Radeon X1600 GPU. But still, I've read stories like yours on the net too many times. I'm seriously considering to go for a non-Apple notebook and some linux distro (eg. Ubuntu) the next time. Apple holds a too tight grap on it's platform. It's the same with their mobile and this is the reason why I've not purchased (and probably never will) an iPhone.

As for Mac OS X, I've recently started to have swapping issues. If I leave the MBP alone for a longer period of time, it gets "slow". Applications take a lot of time to respond, etc. The usual signs of having the applications swapped to disk. The interesting thing is that there's still a lot of free+inactive memory, when this happens. I've already googled a lot on this and found some swapping hacks (disabling or compiling your own dynamic_pager) and at the moment I'm running with only 64MB of swap space. But it has not solved the problem completely. I'll compile a new dynamic_pager that has no swapping at all and see where it takes me.
My problem here is that I've been using Ubuntu for many years now and never had any similiar issue. It seems the linux kernel has a lot better virtual memory (and swap) manager. But how comes that Apple does not learn from Linux? I bet it's not some moral barrier that prevents them from taking over code from the Linux kernel. :->

Fri, 2009.03.20 - 15:09 — csiknor