Recently my 9 year old Apple G4 file server has been randomly crashing. Often it's a kernel panic, but sometimes the system just locks up. It seems almost always to happen when I'm out of my office... but even when I'm in my office, the system is in a separate server room and almost never has anyone at the console. Suspecting bad RAM, I ran memtest but after 20 passes it found no problems. (I ran 10 passes, rebooted, and ran 10 more. Single user mode both times). Apple Hardware Test also reports no problems (After being run in looping more for over 100 loops)
I suspect the hardware is just going bad... it is 9 years old after all. But we don't have the budget to replace the server at this point in time. Until our next upgrade, what would be my best options? Any way to troubleshoot what's crashing? Or at the very least, any way to have the system automatically reboot after a kernel panic or lockup so that it can resume serving?
panic.log shows:
Mon Jun 29 12:52:23 2009
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x00040180): zalloc: "socket" (751876 elements) retry fail 3
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x00040180 0x0026B868 0x00290E10 0x00290F1C 0x00296B40
0x002ABDB8 0x000ABD30 0x00000000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x32288780)
PC=0x9001B08C; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x12555000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x8EF88A00; R1=0xBFFFF700; XCP=0x0000003
0 (0xC00 - System call)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
*********
Fri Jul 3 10:15:24 2009
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x00040180): zalloc: "socket" (762004 elements) retry fail 3
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x00040180 0x0026B868 0x00290E10 0x00290F1C 0x00296B40
0x002ABDB8 0x000ABD30 0x00000000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2C543000)
PC=0x9001B08C; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x11A41000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x8EF88A00; R1=0xBFFFF700; XCP=0x0000003
0 (0xC00 - System call)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
*********
Tue Jul 21 20:44:47 2009
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x00040180): zalloc: "socket" (762004 elements) retry fail 3
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x00040180 0x0026B868 0x00290E10 0x00290F1C 0x00296B40
0x002ABDB8 0x000ABD30 0x00000000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2C543000)
PC=0x9001B08C; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x11A41000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x8EF88A00; R1=0xBFFFF700; XCP=0x0000003
0 (0xC00 - System call)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
*********