Kernel crash

A kernel panic (sometimes abbreviated as KP) is a safety measure taken by an operating system's kernel upon detecting an internal fatal error in which it either is unable to safely recover from or cannot have the system continue to run without having a much higher risk of major data loss. The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems. For Microsoft Windows operating systems the equivalent term is "Stop error", resulting in a bug check screen that presents the bug check code on a blue background in early versions of Windows (colloquially known as a "Blue Screen of Death" or BSOD), or on a green background on the Xbox One platform as well as in some Windows 10 builds.

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. Kernel panics can also be caused by errors originating outside kernel space. For example, many Unix operating systems panic if the init process, which runs in userspace, terminates.

The Unix kernel maintains internal consistency and runtime correctness with assertions as the fault detection mechanism. The basic assumption is that the hardware and the software should perform correctly and a failure of an assertion results in a panic, i.e. a voluntary halt to all system activity. The kernel panic was introduced in an early version of Unix and demonstrated a major difference between the design philosophies of Unix and its predecessor Multics. Multics developer Tom van Vleck recalls a discussion of this change with Unix developer Dennis Ritchie:

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