Can an Internet Connection cause Kernel panics?

[quadgirl]

About a month ago my Powermac G5 quad started randomly freezing and/or having a 'kernel' panic. After reinstalling the OS, it paniced again when communicating with Apple to retrieve my personal details upon first boot.

Since then I have fitted a new internal Hard Drive, changed ram, repaired permissions, reset pmu, zapped pram, etc. It still panics or freezes at random times, sometimes after an hour, sometimes several.

At the weekend I wanting to encode some family video and 8% in to the export, it went again - freezing, panic, fans on full. A second try failed after 4%. I then decided to disconnect the ethernet cable from the router and reboot. The rest of Saturday and most of Sunday was spent encoding the videos and generally 'stressing' the machine as much as possible which DIDN'T cause a single panic.

So I wonder. What do you guys think this means? Is it my router? Is it the Ethernet port? The Router is a Netgear DG834G.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mad jew]

I'd be surprised... Check Console in the Utilities folder to see what the crash logs have to say.

 

[dcv]

Some Macbooks and Macbook Pros have been experiencing kernel panics recently, caused by an Airport driver.

As the ^mad one says, check your logs. You should have a file called "panic.log" inside /library/logs, or you can also access this from within System Profiler. This might give some indication of what module caused your mac to crash. It could also be faulty RAM as you mention you've changed that recently.

 

[quadgirl]

This is a copy of the last panic from the log:

panic(cpu 3 caller 0x000A4CC8): simple lock (0x0038E024) deadlock detection, pc=0x0003D894

Latest stack backtrace for cpu 3:
Backtrace:
0x000952D8 0x000957F0 0x00026898 0x000A4CC8 0x0003D894 0x000B4254 0x000AD9D4 0x000ABF48
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x46F39280)
PC=0x000AF33C; MSR=0x00009000; DAR=0x33B75552; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x00033F10; R1=0x2C7F3E30; XCP=0x00000024 (0x900 - Decrementer)
Backtrace:
0x00033EB8 0x000A9514
Exception state (sv=0x4695FA00)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.10.0: Wed May 23 16:50:59 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.21.3~1/RELEASE_PPC

I'm not sure what this really tells me. I have tried several pieces of ram and now just using one matched pair.

 

[mad jew]

Yeah I can't get much from that. Is there more?

 

[jluna]

Yes - I think I have this same problem

quadgirl,

Yes, I think this is possible because I think I have the same exact problem. I don't have a quad powermac, but a dual g5 powermac. The machine is freezing and it seems to be directly related to internet use. I haven't spent an entire day off the internet like you, but the correlation is definitely there.

I also have kernel panics that are very similar to the one you posted. Please let me know if you get any more information about troubleshooting / correcting this issue.

I have been contemplating getting a third party PCI network card and trying to install it. However, I'm not sure if this type of thing is supported, or where to look for PCI network cards that are mac compatible. I would be very appreciative of any advice from the forums.

 

[tuartboy]

A kernel panic is something in the core OS code that experienced an unrecoverable error. They can also be caused by bad hardware interacting with software that cannot recover from a hardware error (like writing to bad memory). The router itself cannot cause the panic as it only communicates with your computer over networking protocols handled by your network stack. (Of course, your network stack could have a bug, but it is very old and quite thoroughly tested. Vista rewrote their stack and it was a mess up until late '06...)

I don't know enough about the mach kernel to know how much damage bad drivers can cause. In my understanding, mach kernels, while often slower than microkernels, better protect the core from user space application errors (the reason an application can crash and you can quickly recover with no problems). If the network drivers aren't running in a protected space, they could probably bring down your system if they were corrupted or buggy.

However, I must say that every kernel panic issue I have had (note: just my experience) has been traced back to bad memory in one way or another.

Best of luck. It sounds like you have done a lot of your homework and maybe it is just time to take it in for service.