Leopard crashes non-stop. Troubleshooting ideas?

[AlienHrGig]

As suggested, Ive attempted to try stability without IDE. In fact, I went so far as to disable the Jmicron controller in BIOS. These actions did not fix my kernel panics. At the moment, I am sticking with 3+3/8 GB of ram as set with the maxmem flag and all is stable.

 

I did notice that Gigabyte released the F11 bios upgrade. I will give that a try this evening. I've ben running F8 since F9/F10 gave memtest errors. Maybe F11 will be helpful in this regard.

 

 

did you get to testing the F11 bios on your gigabyte? if so what was the result?

[rassha]

Great topic.. very helpfull..

 

 

I also expirienced BSOD problem with 4gb dual channel RAM, but with flag maxmem=3325, al problems are gone...

 

Thanks to all...

[aquagrrl]

Well go figure. My problem wasn't related. Or maybe it was, and then the later crashes weren't. I started to suspect my USB WiFi dongle, so unplugged it and switched to a ethernet to wifi adapter. No kernal panics since.

 

I haven't switched my ram back to 4 gigs yet. I might, but I want to be 100% sure that won't cause a problem.

 

However, it DOES have me thinking. Are our operating systems not running as 64 bit? The problem described sounds like our OS's aren't running 64 bit, so we're limited to the amount of ram a 32 bit system can use. Does that sound right? Thoughts on fixing it?

[Ishmael]

I'm having the same issue, but I only have 1 gig of ram (2x512). Switched from Dual Channel to Single Channel, and it seemed to get WORSE. Any suggestions on what to set the maxmem to so I can try that?

 

Any other suggestions?

 

System spec:

 

ABIT IC7-Max3 motherboard, Intel P4 3.0e socket 487, 1 gig (2x512) OCZ matched pair dual channel DDR 400

 

Kalaway 10.5.1 using EFI_MBR NON-vanilla Kernel

 

Thanks

[aquagrrl]

Ishmael, if I can hazard a guess, your problem has nothing to do with the maxmem problem in this thread. Could be bad memory, or a problem with a hardward conflict or 3rd party software. As with my problem, it turned out in the end to not be a problem with ram, I just made a lucky guess.

 

Good luck!

[peach-os]

had the same problem with 4GB ram - worked with 3GB ram without problems.

but now it looks like 10.5.2 has solved this problem

I will make an update in a week

[LeonDEpro]

my info update:

 

Kalyway 10.5.2 successfully updated with cracked/updated kernels, yet this prob remains. Still sticking to maxmem=3325, which is still the only way out for me.

[peach-os]

unfortunately I must confirm that

meanwhile i had a few crashes - so I´m back to 3 gigs of ram and it works

[TrickyC]

hi

 

i use 6gig of DDR2 with kallyway 10.5.1 without any problem

 

just wanted to notify you ..

 

6GIG DDR2 667

 

I have 6gb of Kingston Valueram ddr2 667 on kalyway 10.5.2 vanilla....I crash whenever I run transmission or a torrent program when it resumes or rechecks for exsisting data. I can watch my memory drain and turn to inactive memory until it hits a certain point and I get a kernel panic... I havn't tried memmax yet or just running 2gb but I have tried every combination of slot positions and bios settings I can think of. I would prefer to run all 6gb of my ram, that's why i bought it.

I'll report back if I have any success.

[amb7247]

more:

 

 

I put it together that the crashing started when I copied over my 77GB iPhoto library from an external USB.

 

 

After uninstalling a bunch of applications without fixing the crashing problem, I deleted the 77GB iPhoto library from my main drive.

 

I then stopped, cleared, and restarted Spotlight (this before could cause me a crash 100% of the time). It ran without fail.

 

I'm currently copying the library back over to test again... but I wonder if there is some issue with large iPhoto libraries.

 

VMWARE Fusion is wayyyy better man. I tried running parallels 3.0 and I had issues trying to get it to run right. VMware not only lets me share my network but I can also hear and run winamp, mirc etc in it and hear my music while in vista through VMware. Also the performance is also pretty decent.

[peach-os]

@ TrickyC

 

please post your specs

are using any ide devices?

[Ishmael]

I think I found my problem...

 

I turned OFF Hyperthreading, and system seems to have become stable!

 

Give it a shot, and let me know if it works for you.

 

Regards,

 

Ish

[zbro]

maxmem solved it for me.

I have 4GB RAM (2x2GB).

 

I got another idea from a friend at work - to increase the voltage to the RAM. Anyone cares to try and report back?

[peach-os]

maxmem solved it for me.

I have 4GB RAM (2x2GB).

 

I got another idea from a friend at work - to increase the voltage to the RAM. Anyone cares to try and report back?

 

that´s usually the first thing you do - I´ve checked my ram with memtest and changed voltage and settings till no more errors occurred. after kernel panics appeared I did this procedure again without any errors.

[yamcha]

Guys I think its Kalyway related, I didn't have any issues with iATKOS, not even once , I got the screen yesterday night and today, doesn't happen much, fairly random happened when i was watching movie online.. If it happens again I'm def gonna try the upping memory voltage.. NO way im gonna remove memory lol I need all of it :]

[peach-os]

Guys I think its Kalyway related, I didn't have any issues with iATKOS, not even once , I got the screen yesterday night and today, doesn't happen much, fairly random happened when i was watching movie online.. If it happens again I'm def gonna try the upping memory voltage.. NO way im gonna remove memory lol I need all of it :]

 

didn´t use kaliway - clean install!

[zbro]

I used iAtkos so...

anyway - this solved it for me WITHOUT maxmem or tweaking memory voltage:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=88335

[peach-os]

I used iAtkos so...

anyway - this solved it for me WITHOUT maxmem or tweaking memory voltage:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=88335

 

then we should find out what´s the difference

[rassha]

Great topic.. very helpfull..

 

 

I also expirienced BSOD problem with 4gb dual channel RAM, but with flag maxmem=3325, al problems are gone...

 

Thanks to all...

 

 

seems to me, that I find solution

On my motherboard (Asus P5K), there is a feature called "memory remap" which has to be disabled. Every since i disabled it, OSX is stable.

Ultimate test (i tested with it frequently as experimented with "maxmem" flag) is that i play several divx at once, and burn some DVD.

 

No BSOD

 

Memory remap can be found in advanced settings - north bridge

[yamcha]

Works with AHCI enabled no crashes.

[oddWord]

problem solved!!!!!

 

 

Thank you kalyway and thank you insanelymac!!!!!

[Dewdman42]

I know someone with a MacPro who tells me that he is unable to use more then 2-3GB of memory for any given program instance. He does audio production, so he gets around this by loading up samples in several seperate running programs(each one able to use 2-3GB of memory) and then patches it all together with JackOSX or something like that. So the system is able to handle 8GB or more or memory between all the programs, but the main problem I think is that 32bit programs that were compiled as 32bit apps with a 32bit compiler, will run on Leo, but they still can't address more than 2-3GB of memory each. It seems to me that Leo should not crash either...that is bad programming somewhere. But the interesting thing is that my friend's MacPro, I don't think it crashes. He just runs out of memory.

 

I am inclined to think that something about Kalyway's EFI emulation is not reporting back to OSX the correct amount of memory needed by video and other subsystems. Therefore OSX thinks there is more memory available for applications then there really is. That's all I can figure. Theoretically, each application should be able to load up to the same maximum limit, the only question is whether they will be into virtual memory or not. But if OSX thinks there is more physical memory available then there really is, then applications would over-write video areas or other areas reserved by the OS and kernel, etc....and would easily lead to a crash.

 

that is my suspicion. In the meantime, we can all be grateful that otherwise, Kalyway is a practically painless install and my OC'd PC that cost less than half the price of a MacPro is pretty smokin'

[varikin]

First of all, if you add debug=0x100 to com.apple.Boot.plist so it looks like this:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 <key>Kernel</key>
 <string>mach_kernel</string>
 <key>Kernel Flags</key>
 <string>debug=0x100 maxmem=3072</string>
 <key>Timeout</key>
 <string>5</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

The kernel panic will be displayed on screen instead of the GSOD. Check out this thread:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?act...138&t=82546

 

Anyways, I wrote a small python script that leaks memory. I ran it and opened the activity monitor to watch the process. (Having two monitors sure is nice). somewhere between 3 and 4 of used memory, the kernel would panic like described in the thread above. I set the maxmem to the 3325 recommended above and it doesn't panic, just use all my memory.

[numberonekiwi]

I myself have noticed this issue and I am not using the AppleVIA kexts but it only happens when using Azereus and posting on forums - strange but using either on its own is so far ok

[Dewdman42]

I have found that changing my BIOS to AHCI for all SATA ports instead of IDE solved this issue 100%, full 4GB memory use. The problem appears to be related to IDE, probably in the IDE drivers most people use. If you must use IDE, then look into the possibility of there being higher quality IDE drivers somewhere. if you can switch to AHCI mode then try it.