Panic.log -- when is it updated?

[IJ Reilly]

This afternoon, my 12" PowerBook kernel panicked for the first time in over three years, so naturally I was interested to know the cause. After running fsck in Single User Mode and rebooting, I opened panic.log and found only references to the last series of kernel panics I'd experienced on this Mac, in late 2003, when I was having problems with RAM. To my surprise, I found no reference to today's panic in the log.

Is this unusual? Shouldn't the panic.log record all kernel panics?

Thanks!

 

[WildCowboy]

My understanding is that the KP data gets stored in NVRAM and then is written to panic.log upon reboot. But the single-user mode/fsck routine prevents this from being written to the log.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Interesting! My first instinct after any kind of improper shut down is to look for disk damage in Single User Mode. Not such a good idea, perhaps?

 

[WildCowboy]

You may still be able to pull out the info by looking at the contents of NVRAM.

Linkety

 

[IJ Reilly]

You may still be able to pull out the info by looking at the contents of NVRAM.

Linkety

I didn't find anything that looked like panic.log data in nvram, but it's a nice tip anyway.