Kernel Panic

System panic or Kernel panic is a special issue in Mac. When it occurs, a screen curtain rolls down quickly like a transparent film blocking the whole screen. After the curtain is down, you cannot interact with Mac OS any more. There is no way you can save anything you have done. Therefore, it is extremely frustrating during the time you have lots of work done but not saved. Fortunately, most of time you can get back to normal OS after power down and up again.

I had this issue several times in my previous iMac 27 with Snow Leopard. Recently the kernel panic came back twice again in the past month. I remembered that I called Apple support line about this issue. I think that we spent about more than half hour to figure out any issue. Eventually, I was told that I had to reinstall my OS. After the re-installation of OS, the issue seems gone for a while. That's what I can remember about the issue.

The following screen actually is the one I had long time ago. There was no way to take screen shot, so I had to use my iPhone to take a picture. Today I saw this familiar one again. I decided to to re-intall my Lion OS.

Reinstall Mac OS Steps

Power off my Mac and restart it. When the power is up, hold command+R key till the screen is back.

Select Reinstall Mac OS. This time is for Lion:

Not sure if it did download Mac OS again to not, but it only take about 24 minute time:

Then, the Mac restarted. The next screen is to install Mac OS. This process took about 35 minutes.

When the reinstallation is finished, my Mac is back. All the programs and documents are still as same as before. I hope this reinstallation will keep the kernel panic away.

Reference

• Wikipeida: Kernel panic

Update: Application Loader

Today is Saturday. After breakfast, I came to my Mac to browse web. Soon I noticed this update was jumping on the background: an update of Application Loader. Based on the description, it looks like something related to App Store applications.

Here is the snapshot of the updates:

Since this was unexpected update, I did not have chance to reboot to get clear statistics of spaces before the update. I took a snapshot of free spaces before the update, and get another statistics after the update with a reboot.

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...4,787,936
After	...2,564,852
Difference (A-B)	-2,223,084

Two Updates

Last night I saw two updates. I did not have time to get disk space information with clean restart before the update. I recorded the disk space during my working session. The updates requires a reboot.

Here are snapshots of the updates:

Before reboot, I got this warning message about not disconnecting power cable:

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...2,150,696
After	...1,923,344
Difference (A-B)	-227,352

How to Delete Photos from iCloud

I have enabled my photo streaming to iCloud. It just works. However, there is one very disappointed thing. You cannot delete individual photos in iCloud. I took some photos which are just fingers, I blocked my iPhone camera.

After googling, I found this web about reset all photos in iCloud photo streaming: how to delete photos from iCloud by Cult of Mac.  This article explains how to remove all photos in iCloud.

iCloud photo streaming is a very nice service. All the photos I have taken by my iPhone are available automatically in my iMac and AppleTV. However, people sometimes do make mistakes or they regret to take some photos. How come we cannot delete photos we own?

I see that many users are crying for this deleting individual photo feature. I guess this should not be too hard. Hope the next update vernon of iCloud will have this feature.

Mac OS 10.7.3 Update

This update was done on Feb 1, 2012: Mac OS Update 10.7.3. I have not experienced any difference. I hope my OS is more reliable or stable.

Here is a snapshot of the update:

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...6,612,828
After	...5,649,268
Difference (A-B)	-963,560

Update: Airport 6.0

This update was done several days ago. Today I notice that Mac Lions has one update. Therefore, I have to rush this blog about the update of Airport 6.0

Here is a snapshot of the update:

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...282,584
After	...467,916
Difference (A-B)	185,332

iTunes 10.5.3 Update

Back from China visit, 3 weeks away, I found no update at all on Jan 15, 2012.  Today Apple released the iBook2 and related information at New York news conference.  iTunes update is released afterward.

Here is a snapshot of the update:

The following is the comparison of spaces used before and after:

Command: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...70,352
After	...68,692
Difference (A-B)	1,660