How to crash my MacOs without causing hardware damage or file corruption

Question

Created 2w

Replies 5

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Requirement:- Crash my MacOs laptop such that my crashes get collected in the /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports folders. But the crash shouldn't hamper my laptop's performace.

I read that we had an approach to cause a kernel panic, but I'm really concerned about the state that this would put my device in. Any advice would be helpful, thanks.

Answered by DTS Engineer in 804583022

It’s hard to answer this without a better definition of “Crash my MacOs laptop”. If you’re specifically referring to a kernel panic — see If your Mac restarts and a message appears from Apple Support — then there’s no way to safely do that. A kernel panic is unlikely to damage your hardware, but it definitely risks file corruption.

If you want to experiment with kernel panics, I recommend that you do that on a ‘victim’ machine, one that stores no data that you care about. I generally use a VM for this sort of thing.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Boost

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1w

Recommended

It’s hard to answer this without a better definition of “Crash my MacOs laptop”. If you’re specifically referring to a kernel panic — see If your Mac restarts and a message appears from Apple Support — then there’s no way to safely do that. A kernel panic is unlikely to damage your hardware, but it definitely risks file corruption.

If you want to experiment with kernel panics, I recommend that you do that on a ‘victim’ machine, one that stores no data that you care about. I generally use a VM for this sort of thing.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

0

Answer 2

Vedang-Agarwal02 OP

1w

I just want something that can cause a crash log in the /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports folder. If kernel panic is the only solutio then I won't go ahead with it.

0

Answer 3

Vedang-Agarwal02 OP

1w

I'll give you the context here. I want to create a script which fetches the system crashes fr my organization. System crashes are system/kernel level crashes which affect my whole machine(e.g. Kernel panics, but these do not include application specific crashes). I know Kernel panics appear as .panic files in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports folder. 1)Are there any other type of system crashes in MacOs apart from Kernel panic 2)If so, what are they called and from where can I log them.

0

Answer 4

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1w

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Are there any other type of system crashes in [macOS] apart from Kernel panic

That’s very much an implementation, and thus not something I can answer. It wouldn’t surprise me if current or historical systems placed other diagnostic reports there but, even if they don’t, that could well change in the future.

Given your specific situation, I reckon you should just collect everything in that directory and sort it out on the server side [1].

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

[1] Even if you don’t have a server (-: My point is that you once you have the info you can choose to ignore anything that you don’t find immediately relevant.

0

Answer 5

Vedang-Agarwal02 OP

1w

I don't want to display everything that is present in the diagnostic reports folder. I want to segregate the folder into system specific crashes and application specific crashes, and showing all the data to the organization might present inaccurate information. For the current Mac versions, are system crashes denoted just by .panic files? Or they can be found under .crash or .ips files too?

0