Kernel Panics
A panic is the kernel’s main defense mechanism for dealing with exceptional conditions, such as the preceding list of problems. Instead of attempting to keep going on a fault, the safest course of action is to terminate execution of the system immediately to avoid damage to the file system. When a Mac OS X system panics, the user is likely met by the multilingual panic screen, unless the kernel has been configured with debugging options instructing the user to restart the computer, as shown in Figure 16-1.
Figure 16-1. Mac OS X Panic Screen, the Mac OS X equivalent of Window’s blue screen of death
Behind the scenes, the system ...
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