I was using my MacPro (Mac OS 10.7 installed on an SSD) and used Sys Prefs to choose a new startup volume (a second SSD with 10.13 on it). When it rebooted I had the following error message come up. Anybody know what this means in non-tech language?
Thanks in advance!
Mac Pro
Kernel panics like the spinlock acquisition error cannot be caused by applications. This is either a hardware defect or a kernel extension malfunction. Especially 3rd-party extensions can have bugs. To get a list of all non-Apple extensions you have to go to the terminal and type the following command: ~ kextstat | grep -v com.apple.
https://superuser.com/questions/273842/macbook-pro-kernel-panics
You’re gonna have to sort this one locally.
It’s a target-rich environment for potential hardware and software culprits. Could be a transient glitch, could be memory timing, could be SSD oddities, down-revision software, or could be lurking elsewhere.
The infrequent crashes are going to make this that much more interesting to isolate and trace, unfortunately.
On exactly zero certainty, I’d start the bug-hunt by replacing the 667 MHz memory with 800 MHz memory, as Macs can be touchy about even supposedly-properly-spec’d memory. And spinlocks are already inherently memory-timing-related. Unless you can find folks that claim to have tried 667 MHz memory, and even then your memory can be flaky
BDAqua: Like this Mac Pro, I have my good-memory days and my bad-memory days, and sometimes my locks spin freely and sometimes they sieze.
What’s running here? Lion 10.7 (10.7.5) as was mentioned (and as is seemingly confirmed by the Darwin kernel version 11.4.2), or maybe the final version for this Mac Pro (early 2008) OS X 10.11, or macOS 10.13 High Sierra per the community this is posted in? I’m going to here assume the the High Sierra posting location is incorrect, and that this is running OS X 10.7.5.
If you’re really running 10.7, get a backup, and try an upgrade to the final version for that Mac Pro; to OS X 10.11.
As mentioned above, kexts are a potential trigger. There’s one visible in the backtrace info.
The memory shown in the backtrace also doesn’t match what I see in the Mac Pro early 2008 specs; DDR2 667 MHz PC2-5333, when the specs indicate DDR2 800 MHz PC2-6400. Mismatched memory can cause issues.
There’s a collection of other hardware modifications visible here (storage and graphics don’t seem to match the specs, of what I’ve looked at), which pretty much means you’re going to have to start swapping parts and see what might be triggering this, if it’s not software. I’d start with swapping in 800 MHz memory, if it’s not software.
If you don’t already have a complete and current backup, get that first.
So basically I have 10.7 on one SSD and 10.13 on another. 10.7 I keep around because it has my old installs of Final Cut Studio and the Adobe Photoshop suite if apps from back before they went subscription based. For most of my normal stuff though I boot to the drive with 10.13. I used dosdude's software to get 10.13 on this MacPro btw. Which I suppose could cause problems but everything has been working fine for a couple months now. This was the first time I had this message pop up.
The RAM is new that I put in a month or two ago based on reveiws of others with MacPro 3,1's from Early 2008. Before I put those in I only had 2gbs of RAM and with the old spinning disc drives the computer was so slow. That's why I tried the SSDs and it was so much better, like a brand new computer.
The only problem is that error message above that happened after I chose a new startup disc in system prefs and rebooted. Like I said, it's only happened once so far. Although sometimes 10.13 doesn't wake up after the display goes to sleep. Not often but occasionally.
Man you're good at this! :)
:D
Error log help? Spinlock acquisition timed out: lock owner thread, lock owner active on CPU
