panic

1. operating system What Unix does when a critical

internal consistency checks fails in such a way that Unix

cannot continue. The kernel attempts to print a short

message on the console and write an image of memory into the

swap area on disk. This can be analysed later using adb.

The kernel will then either wait in a tight loop until the

machine is rebooted or will initiate an automatic reboot.

Unix manual page: panic(8).

2. Action taken by software which discovers some fatal problem

which prevents it from continuing to run.

(1995-03-01)