A kernel panic is an action taken by an operating system upon detecting an internal fatal error from which it cannot safely recover. The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems; for Microsoft Windows operating systems the equivalent term is "Bug check" (or, colloquially, "Blue Screen of Death").
The kernel routines that handle panics, known as panic in AT&T-derived and BSD Unix source code, are generally designed to output an error message to the console, dump an image of kernel memory to disk for post-mortem debugging and then either wait for the system to be manually rebooted, or initiate an automatic reboot. The information provided is of a highly technical nature and aims to assist a system administrator or software developer in diagnosing the problem.
Famous quotes containing the words kernel and/or panic:
“After night’s thunder far away had rolled
The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold”
—Edward Thomas (1878–1917)
“It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)