Is this a kernal panick attack?

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Level 1

15 points

Is this a kernal panick attack?

This AM I found my iMac completely shutdown and unresponsive to On button pushes. Pulled the machine out and checked the power cord. It seemed alright. The UPS unit was ok. Fortunately it then started up on the next power on. Went to the Console to see what may have happened in the night to cause the power down. There were over 4,000 of the following log entries:

3/5/14 11:27:36.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_allocate_cluster - send HI_WAT_ALERT

3/5/14 11:27:36.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon FAILED - 12

Is this a Kernal attack? If so what causes them?

Thanks for any help or insight.

Thecylclone

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 6, 2014 7:45 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Mar 6, 2014 1:57 PM in response to thecyclone

s this a Kernal attack?

No. See

OS X About kernel panics,
Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics,
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ,
Resolving Kernel Panics,
How to troubleshoot a kernel panic, and
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics for more details.

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Answer 2

Mar 6, 2014 4:47 PM in response to thecyclone

You don't have enough free space on your drive for the kernel to allocate swap space.

Empty your trash and try to free up at least 10G of disk space, preferably more. Check your downloads folder and make sure there aren't any really large files or whatever in there that you might have forgotten about.

Another possibilty might be a "rogue program," meaning one that's continually writing huge amounts of data to a file because of a bug.

That's my guess.

Good luck.

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