But the last panic attack occured after a regular restart, no maintenace was performed prior...
That does not eliminate the possibility of third party add-ons being the cause, especially if there are third party items in startup and or login items.
Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items - The X Lab
Could you please detail more about what Shutdown cause = 2 is all about?
I will give you a (probably incomplete) overly simplistic explanation...
All that I can tell you is that Unix based systems log everything that occurs normally, with logs of exceptions or abnormal events also occurring.
Shutdown events that occur normally, or, normally within driver/kext flow, are logged as (usually) 0 and 1, with other codes possible (such as 2 and 3).
I have yet to find a Unix code guide that adequately differentiates which is what, and do not write the language, but cannot find reference to any non-negative numbers being abnormal with regard to the action.
With regard to irregular shut downs, crashes that cause shut downs are typically not logged due to interruption of the CPU write processes.
When a shut down fails or occurs due to a failure, that will be typically be logged as a -1.
Other shutdown causes such as user command or force quit will also have logs but not typically numbered.
Since your shutdown cause = -1 isn't what you have, I believe that your shutdowns are software inflicted, either by the BSD alone (less likely) or due to third party add on action (most likely).
I think that your software, somewhere, is dumping conflicting commands into the system. This is likely what causes the freezes, crashes and shutdowns.
My first suspect would be any regularly scheduled maintenance software.
I would UNINSTALL it.
Maintenance software really isn't necessary anyhow..... Most all of it simply capitalizes on built in OS X operations and simply provides a UI that allows user manipulation and addition of third party kext scheduling.
I have used nothing but disk utilities and OS X built in kron scripts for years in all my systems (I currently run 6). Once in a blue moon maybe a cache cleaning utility, but ONLY when there is abnormal behavior. Improper or too deep of a cache cleaning can destabilize a system. Maintenance utilities have this potential... ALL of them.
For the purposes of troubleshooting though, like with anti virus software, uninstalling is a must. It can always be put back if one really wants it.
Not to discount hardware, though. A VERY common source of kernel panics (that is the real issue) is failing or failed RAM.
Download Rember or Memtest X and test ALL RAM. Memtest X in Single User mode does the best job at testing all RAM at once. This is the best way to find the hard to find random errors that can drive one nuts.....
