Why are kernel panics now happening?

I did more testing on my end. I can confirm that my kernel panics happen specifically after an APFS-formatted drive is completely disconnected and the computer wakes up from its next sleep. I connected and disconnected ExFAT, NTFS, and HFS+ formatted drives without any crashes, but one APFS connection later and I had another panic. It was from a full disconnection (plug pulled out), not just an unmount. I'm getting very tired of this, as I'm using that drive for larger projects.

I have this exact problem, been having it on my M1 Air since updating to 11.6.2. I have an external 2 TB hard drive with one HFS+ partition for storage and one APFS partition for Time Machine backups. The sequence leading to my kernel panics (which is also a 60-second busy timeout due to AppleAPFSMediaBSDClient) is as follows:

• I connect and use the drive.
• I eject and disconnect the drive.
• I put my computer to sleep, then wake it up again.
• About 60 seconds later, the system kernel panics. This is consistent every time I've done this.

I need to use the drive for a project I'm working on, so it's getting frustrating having this crash happen nearly every day. I would update to 12.1 Monterey if I could find any confirmation that all the memory leak bugs were gone, but until then I'm stuck with 11.6.2.

I've reported every crash to Apple, and I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been an update to fix it yet. 11.6.1 and prior versions were completely fine.

Just did my first TM backup since updating to 11.6.3 and the same kernel panic occurred after disconnecting the external drive, closing the cover and waking from sleep (2020 M1 MBP). Spoke to an Apple advisor who told me it was a known issue and the only fix is to upgrade to Monterey.

I have the same experience with my 14" M1 mbpro. What I have found is that kernel panic occurs after waking if a QEMU linux VM was running before sleep. Something in the QEMU virtualization stack is triggering the kernel panic every time it wakes from sleep. Are you using QEMU with UTM or with Docker?

-Pedro

MBPro 14, 2021

Monterey 12.1

Please post the entire panic log using the Additional Text area (document icon).

Kernel Panics are predominately caused by third-party kernel extensions or hardware faults.

The Panic log will list any third-party kernel extensions at the top of the loaded kexts section of the log.

Other things in the log can hint at possible hardware causes, but generally it's just a guess.

I mentioned this on another thread from someone else who had the same problem, but for me, it's actually when I specifically make a Time Machine backup that the crash is set up to happen. Other APFS-formatted drives don't trigger it for me. I think this makes the situation worse because of how important backing up a computer is. Monterey doesn't have this bug, only Big Sur 11.6.2. I sent a report to their Product Feedback system, and I hope there will be a fix soon as I am not ready to update to Monterey yet.

Upgrading from Big Sur 11.6.2 to Monterey 12.2 resolved the kernel panic issues for me as well.

I got tired of the afs bug and updated from 11.6.3 to 12.2. After the update I've had no crashes.

Hi all!

I've had these kernel panics for a couple of months on my iMac 27 bought in September 2021, but now I think I know what caused them. I think it was because of corrupt (old) shortcuts in the dock below (don't know what it's called in English) that didn't sync correctly to programs that had been updated. I opened Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat and Illustrator via those alias/shortcuts, and they were probably not OK as the system tried to link them to a previous version of the program. My crash logs always said: ”CPU Machine Check Architecture Error Dump”.

After trying soooooo many things that all failed (was it the external screen?, no, updates?, no, cables?, no, updating system?, no and so on), this was yet another test: perhaps I should delete all of those ”alias/shortcuts” in the dock (still don't know what it's called in English) and start opening programs by double clicking documents instead? And hey, since the I haven't had a single system krasch. My Mac seems to be happy again, and so am I! =)

I do hope this was it!

Don't know if this applies, but I was having issues with kernel panics when closing Photoshop. If you're using any Adobe products, or if you suspect it's another app, try granting it Security permissions (System Preferences / Security & Privacy / Privacy Tab) in both Accessibility & Full Disk Access.

I just upgraded to Monterey and have not been able to reproduce the bug. It looks like it is fixed.

Do you have any external hardware attached when it panics?

There aren't any third-party kernel extensions loaded.

The last loaded kext and the panic signature seem to imply some problem accessing a storage device.

An alternative is go back to Big Sur 11.6.1, despite from a security and features point of view is not the best choice.

I wonder also if a Time Machine backup made using a later macOS version (i.e. 11.6.3) can be used with no issues.

For me it happens even if I haven't disconnected the drive when the Mac mini wakes from sleep. I have a APFS formatted data disk attached via USB-C that is permanently attached to the system. It only has user files on it.

My set up hasn't changed for the last year and the panic only started happening recently with the upgrade to 11.6.2.