CCC causes my OS X Lion 10.7.4 to panic

eugenio_landi
Jun 26, 2012 @ 1:01 pm

Hello,

I use an external Firewire 800 HDD (LaCie 2Big Quadra) where I store my files. In particular it's partitioned in two different volumes (GUID and Extended OS Journaled). One of them is dedicated to CCC only.

The first time I used CCC, I cloned the recovery partition. Since it was done I've been starting trying to clone Macintosh HD.

Well every time I launch the clonining process to the afore mentioned Firewire volume, CCC causes OS X to panic. This is not a random occurrence.

Would you mind helping me to understand where the problem actually is, please?

Thanks a lot.

Regards,

Eugenio

1 Posted by Mike Bombich on Jun 26, 2012 @ 8:21 pm

Hi Eugenio:

CCC can't directly cause a kernel panic, only kernel extensions and the kernel itself (e.g. bugs in those bits of software) can cause kernel panics. It isn't uncommon, however, for a particular hard drive's drivers, anti-virus software or a network filesystem, for example, to cause a kernel panic under the condition of CCC running a backup task. So the troubleshooting challenge is to find the component of software that is causing the kernel panic, then try removing that variable while using the CCC task as the reproducible provoker of the kernel panic.

Let's start with the panic log. You can find it in the Console application, can you attach that here? I'll be able to identify what software caused it.

Thanks,
Mike

2 Posted by eugenio.landi on Jul 12, 2012 @ 9:49 am

Hi Mike,

   thanks so much for your quick support and please accept my apologies for my delayed reply.

I'm going to attach the log upon my arrival at home this evening.

Consider that the message that forces me to restart the Mac is not random and appears systematically every time CCC is about to reach 50% of its cloning process.

All the best,

Eugenio

3 Posted by eugenio.landi on Jul 13, 2012 @ 2:26 pm

Hi Mike,

     another Kernel Panic.

In attach the logs.

I hope that helps.

All the best,

Eugenio

4 Posted by eugenio.landi on Jul 13, 2012 @ 2:28 pm

Notice that eugenio_landi or eugenio.landi refers to me !

5 Posted by Mike Bombich on Jul 13, 2012 @ 2:47 pm

Hi Eugenio:

Everything we need is right here:

      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
         com.symantec.kext.SymAPComm(12.2f65)[17394DAA-B68C-D8B8-B47F-214E85F71253]@0xffffff7f80824000->0xffffff7f80828fff
            dependency: com.symantec.kext.internetSecurity(1.4.1f2)[22E4B1BF-C1D3-FB5B-089A-F6DD8B73D2E0]@0xffffff7f8076c000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: rsync

There are two key pieces of information there:

The name of the application that was at the "root" of the call stack
The name of the kernel extension that caused the panic

You commented previously:

Consider that the message that forces me to restart the Mac is not random and appears systematically every time CCC is about to reach 50% of its cloning process.

Now I realize that this correlation would seem to imply that CCC is causing the kernel panic, but that isn't quite the case. Let me draw an analogy -- Suppose you open the door at the top of a stairway. On the other side of the door, someone is startled by your sudden appearance and he tumbles backwards down the stairs. Thankfully he's OK (after a reboot :-), but when you rush down to help, he blames you for knocking him down the stairs. Of course this is preposterous. Granted it was your presence that startled him, but it was his own action that caused him to tumble.

It's the same in this case -- you have a third-party anti-virus application installed (from Symantec). Every time you run your backup, CCC opens each file that it needs to copy and starts to read it. There must be some file on the source that is invoking your AV software, and upon invocation, the AV software is causing the kernel panic. This is a bug in the AV kernel extension installed by Symantec. Send this kernel panic to them for analysis, it's something that their engineers can use to pinpoint the exact line of code that is causing the panic (it's gibberish to me, because I don't have access to their source code).

To avoid the problem, either uninstall the AV software, or find the file that is causing the problem and exclude it from your backup task.

Mike