Why on earth are panic logs admin account only??? shakes head

Question

Why on earth are panic logs admin account only??? shakes head

09/01/10 9:17:55 AM ReportPanic[691] Reading panic log failed with error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=257 UserInfo=0x1075d0 "The file “2010-01-09-091720.panic” could not be opened because you do not have appropriate access privileges."

Mid-2007 24" 2.8GHz iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 500GB HD, 4GB RAM

Posted on Jan 8, 2010 12:33 PM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jan 8, 2010 4:47 PM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

See
What is a kernel panic,
Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics,
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ,
Resolving Kernel Panics, and
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics for more details.

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Answer 2

Jan 8, 2010 5:05 PM in response to baltwo

I'm not seeing any explanation in those links. Just info about what a kernel panic is, and I already know that - I had a few in Panther (the first version of OSX I seriously used) and Tiger. Never had any in Leopard, or I should say I've just never got to see the panic screen. Leopard just freezes instead. It can't even put up the panic screen. No surprise there - it truly is the buggiest version of OSX since early point versions of 10.2 *long sigh*

But I digress - how come panic logs admin account only? Anyone know the reason behind this foolishness?

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jan 8, 2010 5:11 PM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

Log into your admin account and see if you can duplicate the panic or the report. AFAIK, KPs should log no matter which kind of an account you're logged into. That said, maybe there's something amiss with your permissions.

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Answer 4

Jan 8, 2010 5:34 PM in response to baltwo

baltwo wrote:
Log into your admin account and see if you can duplicate the panic or the report. AFAIK, KPs should log no matter which kind of an account you're logged into. That said, maybe there's something amiss with your permissions.

Yeah logging into My Admin account allows me access to the KP logs. I've never had standard user access to them on any Mac of mine, so if it's a bug it's certainly a widespread one.

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Answer 5

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Jan 8, 2010 6:12 PM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

Hey Bab --

It makes sense to me . . .
Let's say there's you (admin), 2 kids (A & B) and your spouse.
And you get KP's.

Who do you want to see the panic report to do something about them?
In my mind, it would be the admin.

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Answer 6

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Jan 8, 2010 6:29 PM in response to TildeBee

I think Bab is following Apple's security configuation guidelines and not using an admin account for everyday use. I follow those guidelines too and don't use an admin account for everyday user either.

I use this AppleScript to open Console from my non-admin account. It will prompt me to enter an admin username and password, and then Console will launch and run as root, so all logs can be viewed.

do shell script "/Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/MacOS/Console > /dev/null 2>&1 &" with administrator privileges

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Answer 7

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jan 8, 2010 6:40 PM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

The salient issue is can you duplicate the panic whilst in the admin account?

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Answer 8

Jan 8, 2010 9:47 PM in response to baltwo

baltwo wrote:
The salient issue is can you duplicate the panic whilst in the admin account?

Since I never use my admin account and freezes (Leopard is so bad it has never once managed to display the actual kernel panic screen) are rare we'll never know.

However - my issue is that kernel panics are never reported like crashes as I'm never in an admin account. **** - I didn't even KNOW they got reported like crashes with crashreporter, until I had a freeze while installing some crap software without a decent installer which required me to actually be in my admin account to do so - yes, it really was crappy software.

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Answer 9

Jan 8, 2010 9:50 PM in response to TildeBee

~Bee wrote:
Hey Bab --

It makes sense to me . . .
Let's say there's you (admin), 2 kids (A & B) and your spouse.
And you get KP's.

Who do you want to see the panic report to do something about them?
In my mind, it would be the admin.

But Apple will never see them cause they'll never be automatically reported like crashes, as the error I posted above shows. So obviously it would make sense to have them reported and accessible in standard user accounts. In fact I can't think of a reason why they aren't.

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Answer 10

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Jan 9, 2010 12:08 AM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

I had a kernel panic about a month ago while logged in to a non-admin account, and can find no log of it in /Library/Logs/PanicReporter. But some old kernel panic logs are still in there from nearly two years ago, and I remember that I was logged into a non-admin account when those KPs occurred.

While it seems true that sometimes KPs are just not logged, I'm not so sure that this has anything to do with being logged in as a non-admin user at the time of the KP.

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Answer 11

Jan 9, 2010 7:42 AM in response to Király

But look at the error I posted.

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Answer 12

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Jan 9, 2010 9:52 AM in response to BaboonLoveMonkey

You mean the error about not having privileges to read the panic log?

Yes I know about that, and it's an annoyance. The system.log and secure.log files are off-limits to non-administrators too. You can use the AppleScript I posted above to open Console in your non-admin account and read all the log files there.

Or, if you prefer using Terminal to read log files:

su adminusername (press return, enter admin password when prompted)

You are now your admin user on the command line, while logged in to your non-admin account.

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Answer 13

Jan 9, 2010 3:10 PM in response to Király

Yeah, but I mean the logs are being created, they're just not accessible to the app that reports them to Apple. This makes no sense to me.

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Why on earth are panic logs admin account only??? *shakes head*

Why on earth are panic logs admin account only??? shakes head