Leopard kernel panic
Sun, 9 December 2007
Since I have upgraded my iMac to Leopard I have been experiencing random kernel panics (KPs). I really couldn’t figure out why this was happening, no common action or common application that would make the system to crash. Same happens to my wife’s Mac Mini. In fact it’s even more often on her computer - it happens at least once and sometimes up to three times in a day.
I looked up into the reports and one thing became obvious - there is something wrong with the airport driver. I see that many other users who have experienced KPs have reported the same issue, according to their KP reports.
0×34917fc8 : 0×19e2ec (0×0 0×0 0×1a10b5 0×47aef20)
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AirPort.Atheros(300.22)@0×8d3000->0×95dfff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family(200.7)@0×8b5000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.4)@0×63b000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.6.0)@0×64b000
I also have a MacBook Pro, but it never had a KP. Hmmmm … Then I thought that, when installing Leopard, I have done wipe and install on the MPB, but the other two computers had only the plain upgrade.
So I have decided to archive and install Leopard on the Mini and see how it goes. Five days later and no KPs on Mini, I did wipe-and-install on my iMac. It’s now been about 10 days (and 15 days on Mini) with no kernel panics at all. I hope it stays that way.
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Posted in 
Gite said: Mon, 10 December 2007 at 08:35
Hey there. I was getting a lot of KPs also until I decided to uninstall Unsanity’s APE. As you know it gets installed with other programs like Audio Hijack, etc. The clean install would have taken care of that for you as well, but not the “archive and install”.
APE is known not to work with 10.5: http://unsanity.com/haxies/ape
Anyone else finding this fixes their KPs? Good luck with that everyone …
(Leopard is worth it anyway!)
iChristophe said: Thu, 13 December 2007 at 07:30
I had the same problem. It turned out to be Azareus that was the problem…
caleb said: Sat, 15 December 2007 at 04:27
I ran into this for the first time yesterday. I’m not sure what caused it yet, but it’s not related to networking as far as I can tell.
subcorpus said: Sat, 22 December 2007 at 20:52
this is exactly why i am waiting out the leopard install …
you guys can figure out what went rong and fix it …
me … i cant fix anything …
so am waiting for apple and other devolpers to iron out those small things …
still … missing leopard … hehe …
also … eveyone having leopard these days doesnt help the wait …
abovethelies said: Tue, 25 December 2007 at 07:25
Ah, if it’s the Leopard driver, it’s probably bad connections on the motherboard, so you’ll need to take it to a Mac Genius Bar and get them to fix it. Your computers will brick soon if you don’t get them fixed asap. Believe me, happened to two different iBooks of mine and costed me very much to fix each, so much in fact that we just bought new Macbooks.
abovethelies said: Tue, 25 December 2007 at 07:25
Sorry, I meant.. “Ah, if it’s the Airport driver…”
hehe.
ade said: Sat, 12 January 2008 at 01:27
I get this about 3 times per day. It *appears* to be Airport linked because the first symtoms are loss of wireless connetion. Clicking network status causes the crash.
I did an upgrade. I think I need to do a clean install.
russ said: Sat, 19 January 2008 at 21:53
It’s the airport drivers because i’m now getting this with transmission as well.
russ said: Sat, 19 January 2008 at 21:54
and this is on a 4 day old fresh install, 10.5.1 macbook pro 2.4
APDenver said: Fri, 25 January 2008 at 05:12
I have had the kernel panic several times since doing a regular Leopard install. Wireless connection always hangs first.