What is "kernel panic"

n. (context computing English) On Unix-derived operating systems, an action taken by the operating system when it cannot recover from a fatal error.

A kernel panic (sometimes abbreviated as KP) 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 " stop error" (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. Kernel panics can also be caused by errors originating outside of kernel space. For example, many Unix OSes panic if the init process, which runs in userspace, terminates.