Mac Kernal Panics

jpilege
New Contributor III

We've been having an alarming amount of Kernel panics this past week. The Macs that I've seen this happen to are on Sierra and only a couple that have upgraded to High Sierra. I was thinking it was caused by some of them doing upgrades to High Sierra, but when chatting with the employees, they either do a restart or turn it on from a shutdown. Nothing out of the ordinary that I can find. Anyone else having these or ran into something like this?

6 REPLIES 6

PictureProducti
New Contributor III

Kernel Panic logs are stored in:
/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

You'll probably find the culprit in there. Its usually caused by hardware/drivers mis-communicating with each other. For example you'll get something like this on mine, when my GPU triggered a kernel panic:

Mon Jan 8 15:53:37 2018 Event: GPU Reset Date/Time: Mon Jan 8 15:53:37 2018 Application: Path: Tailspin: /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/gpuRestart2018-01-08-155337.tailspin GPUSubmission Trace ID: 0 OS Version: Mac OS X Version 10.13.2 (Build 17C88) Graphics Hardware: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M Signature: 20 Report Data: NVDA(DMA): Channel exception! Exception type = 0x20 DMA Engine Error (PBDMA Error) Channel Info: [17, 0x19, 0x23, 0xf8a4] Version Info: [com.apple.GeForce, 10.2.8, 0x4e554e, 22470010, 355.11.10.10.20.111, 1]

justin_smith
New Contributor III

I encountered this due to 3rd party applications using kernel extensions e.g. Symantec, Avecto, etc. It looks like whatever change was made to mitigate Meltdown and/or Spectre is the cause which is why it's happening in both 10.12.6 and 10.13.x. The machines were stuck in a boot loop and had to be mounted in target disk mode to retrieve the logs.

ChristopherGlov
New Contributor III

This is an issue with the 2018-001 update Apple just released. The Kernel meltdown happened to us because of carbon black. Here are a few articles revolving around the issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8253958

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1956?locale=en_US

https://www.carbonblack.com/2018/01/24/alert-latest-macos-security-updates-cb-response-cb-protection-customers/

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/26832/2018-001-safari-update-causing-crashes-on-10-12-6

LeeGibson
New Contributor III

I also have had five systems with a Kernel panic in the last week. 2013 and 2015 15" MBP Retina models with El Cap and Sierra. Our AV product Trend Micro was causing this for us. If I removed Trend AV it works fine, after an updated client was installed all is well.

AHolmdahl
New Contributor III

Apparently this only applies to TMS versions older than 3.0.3034.
We experienced the same problem - after the 2018-001 security update the machine throws a kernel panic.
Unfortunately the official Trend Micro Security Uninstaller doesn't completely remove everything.

Create a policy scoped to the Mac(s) affected.
Trigger: Custom, named tmsuninstall f.x.
Attach this script:

!/bin/bash

launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.trendmicro.icore.av.plist
rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.trendmicro.*
rm -r "/Library/Application Support/TrendMicro"
rm -r /Library/Frameworks/TMAppCommon.framework
rm -r /Library/Frameworks/TMAppCore.framework
rm -r /Library/Frameworks/TMGUIUtil.framework
rm -r /Library/Frameworks/iCoreClient.framework
rm -r /Applications/TrendMicroSecurity.app
killall -kill TmLoginMgr
killall -kill UIMgmt
exit 0

Boot the Mac in Safe Mode (shift key pressed) and run sudo jamf policy -event tmsuninstall

Hope this helps.

ChristopherGlov
New Contributor III

Hey all, Looks like SEP has issues too. Here is how to fix the issue for SEP

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.ALERT2538.html