Understanding kernel panic error log

Solution 1:

Understanding a panic is quite easy: The core scheduler for the OS got lost in the weeds. This is a fail-safe in that the computer decides to stop running itself.

The inner most portion of the OS's control logic got derailed and the system was designed to drop all processing and leave a log file for engineering to troubleshoot further.

You can see these files after a restart by looking in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and especially if you have several that recur (in the same day or hour) it is sometimes useful to compare the reasons and patterns in the file.

Back to the high level - how to understand this design is that some fundamental things went so wrong in the core of the operating system, the designers have all concluded that it's almost certainly worse to keep running with this error than to halt the computer immediately.

Think of this as a fail-safe at the level where the computer decides what program or instruction gets to run next. The computer is literally out of ideas how to continue, so it dumps what it was working on (as best as it can recollect now that things are off the rails) and stops immediately.

Kernel Panics are some of the hardest to debug unless you have one that you know exactly how to trigger it. In that case, it's pretty easy to keep eliminating possibilities until the source is obvious. Here is the best writeup of Mac specific information on Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics. It is very technical, so take what you wish and move on to the steps below.

Like anything, it's best to isolate the problem to avoid chasing down thousands of potential causes. If you want to be systematic about how you isolate the cause (or worse causes) of a panic, here are the two articles with general steps for isolating software causes before investigating hardware.

• Isolating issues in Mac OS X - great general reference, links to specific sub articles
• Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue

In your specific case - Core Storage is either the root cause or just an innocent next bystander that "falls into the hole" that another process left behind. Good Luck if you decide to isolate this, hopefully it was a one-off error and you can just use your Mac in peace.