Blue Screen of Death for Mac OS X

An anonymous reader writes "Possibly nothing in the OS world has as much of a bad rap as the infamous BSOD (blue screen of death) in Microsoft Windows. On the other hand Apple hides the ugly kernel panics behind a nice looking GUI which only tells you its time to restart your dead system. Interestingly Mac OS X kernel has a secret API which lets you decide what your kernel panics are going to look like! In this Mac OS X Internals article Amit Singh explains how to use this API. Apparently you can upload custom panic images into the kernel and there's even a way to test these images by causing a fake panic. The article also shows the ultimate joke is to upload an actual BSOD image for authentic Windows looking panics right inside of OS X."

Well on the upside

[OverlordQ]

The Win32 BSOD does give you better information so you can try to diagnose the problem.

Which is kinda lacking in the OSX Panic screen.

The world's funniest joke

[Malc]

Hardly the ultimate joke. Jokes are supposed to be original. This has been a screen saver under Linux for years.

Anyway, couldn't this be described as the ultimate joke [youtube.com]?

Keep it simple

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If you have an unstable system (BSOD-worthy), then it is probably best to rely on as few system resources as possible. THis includes GUIs etc. That's why a simple text-based BSOD or oops handler is a better idea than something that tries to do a whole bunch of cute graphics etc (which relies on a whole lot more hardware & software to be working properly).

Hidden?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

hides the ugly kernel panics behind a nice looking GUI

It must hide them really well because in 4 or 5 years I haven't seen one. (I did once about 5 years ago though - that'll teach me to mess with third party USB drivers.)

Re:Well on the upside

[mattgreen]

It gets logged to the system's event log, which you can check out later.

Re:Troll Umbral Blot at it Again.

[Keith Russell]

Here we go again. Today, it's Umbral Blot's turn to have posts that came from rational, critical thinking twisted into "pro-M$ astroturfing" at the hands of the ever-spiteful Twitter.

How do you live, Twitter? Seriously. How can you possibly function in society with this much venom and hate spewing forth from every word you say? Can you make it from Study Hall to Algebra without the kicker from the football team shoving you in a locker?

I don't care how you do it, Twitter. Go to therapy, go to church, whatever. GET HELP!

Re:Well on the upside

[kevmo]

I find it very useful for the rare occasions that I get BSODs anymore to at least know what driver caused the problem. If the BSOD lists something like atixxxxx, then I know that my video card screwed up, and so on. Because almost all of my crashes are caused by driver or hardware problems, its helpful knowing just what that problem is so I can fix the driver or replace the hardware (and thus almost never get crashes on that computer in the future).

Re:Keep it simple

[Phroggy]

1. A pleasant semi-transparent overlay that asks them to reboot their machine (in their native language)

I have one complaint about Apple's kernel panic screen:

It tells the user they need to reboot, with absolutely no indication as to why. I'm not talking about a technical error message, I'm talking about a title at the top saying something akin to "The system has crashed." Being told you need to restart your computer, without being told that the system has crashed, is rather unsettling, in my opinion.

Re:Keep it simple

[jericho4.0]

Regarding your first point; I'm more than a power user. I can actually figure out what those funny numbers mean. But, I never, ever, do. Who the hell does?

Re:Keep it simple

[TheNetAvenger]

Ok, just to be clear, you and everyone else realizes that 'by default' since at least WindowsXP (2001), Windows just restarts and puts this information in a dmp file and the system log if it can.

The end user doesn't have to look at ANY BSoD or geek speak...

Just clarifying, cause it seems like people think Windows locks at the BSoD and scares stupid people - it doesn't.

You also realize how many Mac users I have encountered talk about HOW THEIR MAC NEVER CRASHES, but it does ask them to RESTART IT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.
(Apple hides the kernel panic/crash screens so well, most Mac users never realize their system has crashed. VERY MISLEADING, as most of them don't even realize they lost data on what they were working on if it wasn't saved.)

Ok, carry on...

Re:Gray screen of death

[glesga_kiss]

That's not the point. A malicious user can hose the entire system by running 'cat /dev/zero >> /opt/junk'. And I mean hose as in "system unusable, 100% of data lost"; the worst kind of hosed. The fact that Final Cut has options to manage this doesn't detract from the fact that the OS should manage itself better. Writing over track 0 on the HD? Creation of undeletable files? What is this, a return to the 8-bit days again?

When you get to 100MB free, the OS should tell the applications to go away. It should never fill 100% of the drive. Let's see you boot to remedy it when you can't write to log files.