Automatic reboot after panic

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Konstantinos Agouros - 27 May 2006 14:13 GMT

Hi,

somehow my MacMini seems to panic roughly once a month. Since I use
it as a VCR I would like it to boot afterwards automatically without
intervention. Can this be set somehow?

Regards,

Konstantin

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Dipl-Inf. Konstantin Agouros aka Elwood Blues. Internet: elwood@agouros.de
Otkerstr. 28, 81547 Muenchen, Germany. Tel +49 89 69370185
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sales@pbmods.com - 28 May 2006 16:44 GMT

Since a kernel panic is more or less a complete system failure, there's
no way to detect nor handle it automatically.

A better solution would be to try to eliminate the kernel panics
altogether. Do you remember when the panics started occurring, and did
you install any new hardware, software or system upgrades about that
time?

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ZnU - 28 May 2006 18:06 GMT

> Since a kernel panic is more or less a complete system failure, there's
> no way to detect nor handle it automatically.

OS X Server can automatically reboot after a kernel panic, actually. I
don't know what the technical mechanism is. Presumably it takes
advantage of some hardware feature, which reboots the system if the OS
isn't alive to tell it not to, or something.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same capability was available with the
desktop version of OS X, though without an nice friendly interface to
enable it.

> A better solution would be to try to eliminate the kernel panics
> altogether. Do you remember when the panics started occurring, and did
> you install any new hardware, software or system upgrades about that
> time?

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William R. Walsh - 29 May 2006 04:04 GMT

Hi!

> OS X Server can automatically reboot after a kernel panic, actually. I
> don't know what the technical mechanism is. Presumably it takes
> advantage of some hardware feature, which reboots the system if the OS
> isn't alive to tell it not to, or something.

I'd hazard a guess that it's a watchdog timer mechanism of some sort...in
other words, if the timer isn't strobed by the OS, it times out after a
while and some action is taken, such as rebooting.

William

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Konstantinos Agouros - 29 May 2006 16:49 GMT

>Since a kernel panic is more or less a complete system failure, there's
>no way to detect nor handle it automatically.

Linux can do that... echo <time_in_seconds> > /proc/sys/kernel/panic and
the box reboots.

>A better solution would be to try to eliminate the kernel panics
>altogether. Do you remember when the panics started occurring, and did
>you install any new hardware, software or system upgrades about that
>time?

First one 2 days after fresh install
2nd one exactly one month after
3rd one approx. one month after no 2.

I have an elgato-dvb-t tuner and an m-audio transit usb connected
to it nothing else.

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Simon Slavin - 31 May 2006 22:36 GMT

On 27/05/2006, Konstantinos Agouros wrote in message
<1148735584.299627@rumba>:

> somehow my MacMini seems to panic roughly once a month.

Find the problem and fix it. Have you read the panic log and identified
what's causing the fault ? See here:

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106227>

Panics are almost always down to hardware faults. If you leave it longer
you won't be able to get it fixed free.

> Since I use
> it as a VCR I would like it to boot afterwards automatically without
> intervention. Can this be set somehow?

The 'Server' version does this using watchdog. That's massive overkill
for a machine intended as a client computer. FIx the problem, not the
results.

Simon.

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http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk

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Mac Forum / General / General / May 2006

Automatic reboot after panic