Kernel panic

The kernel routines that handle panics, known as panic() in AT&T-derived and BSD Unix source code, are generally designed to output an error message to the console, dump an image of kernel memory to disk for post-mortem debugging, and then either wait for the system to be manually rebooted, or initiate an automatic reboot.

[2] The information provided is of a highly technical nature and aims to assist a system administrator or software developer in diagnosing the problem.

The basic assumption is that the hardware and the software should perform correctly and a failure of an assertion results in a panic, i.e. a voluntary halt to all system activity.

[8] Add-on hardware or malfunctioning RAM could also be sources of fatal kernel errors during start up, due to incompatibility with the OS or a missing device driver.

[10] During the final stages of kernel userspace initialization, a panic is typically triggered if the spawning of init fails.

On Linux, a kernel panic causes keyboard LEDs to blink as a visual indication of a critical condition.

[16] When a kernel panic occurs in Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.7, the computer displays a multilingual message informing the user that they need to reboot the system.