Kernel Panics on Dual Processor XSERVES & 10.4.x

[wemeck]

Friends—

A friend of mine who is a tech at District 70 in lake counjty Illinois, have been working together with some weird server issues. District 70 brought in MacSpecialists and was told that the issue involves kernel panics with DP Xserves. Now we are not talking full out black text across the screen kernel panics but unnoticed internal ones. I asked around at the Apple X server list serve, and a few others reported problems with DP Xserves. Below you will find a response from someone at Macspecialists with the hard facts. I thought you all should be made aware of this.

Thanks,

Michael
ACDT, ACPT, ACHDS, CNA
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Message: 17
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 14:07:05 -0600
From: “Jason Broccardo”
Subject: Re: Kernel Panics on Dual Processor XSERVES & 10.4.x
To: [email protected]
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hello, all,

Though I am not the person working on this issue (that would be our
lead SE, Steve Burke), I felt the need to speak up since
MacSpecialist’s name was mentioned.

The problem occurs on Dual Processor machines, either G4 or G5,
running OS X 10.4.x (including 10.4.5) and large number of AFP
connections. The problem is not AFP though but hfs access.

Look for things like “hfs_getnewvnode()”and “iocount < 1 panic" in the
panic logs. If you have RADAR access, it is a listed issue.

See also:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-kernel/2005/Oct/msg00000.html
http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-kernel/2005/Oct/msg00062.html

http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0510&L=macenterprise&T=0&F=&S=&P=72391

Solution for now is to compile the kernel with a patch (see the above
MacEnterprise link) or to disable one of the processors with CHUD (or
physically remove it). Perhaps 10.4.6 will take care of the issue as
10.4.5 did not.

have a good day,
Jason
MacSpecialist, Villa Park, IL

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