Kernel Panic on macOS (crash, reboot)

Probably you had an older version of Electron with obsidian. This is between electron and obsidian. But if it reaches kernel panic status, I blame Apple more than Electron.

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Some people think this might be a GPU driver issue. try running obsidian with --disable-gpu.

Again this is on apple’s court. There is really nothing we can do about it.

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Thanks for the thorough replies! I’ll try your suggestions and report back if I still have KPs, just for keeping tabs.

@WhiteNoise on that github issue (which sadly is closed so I guess nobody’s looking at it…) alb3rtuk mentions he thinks it’s related to the paulmillr/chokidar file watching library. Does Obsidian use this module? might help narrow it down…

It’s closed because the electron dev think it’s apple’s problem. we don’t use chokidar and even if we did, it should not cause kernel panics. Please submit your crash reports to apple.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a panic, and am now on 11.2. Hopefully this was an 11.0/11.1 bug that’s been fixed. Anyone else gotten KPs in the last few days?

I still got Kernel panic today.

Environment

  • Operating system: macOS 11.2.1
  • Obsidian version: 0.11.0

I also encounter a crash at least once a day when I use Obsidian, even sometimes while the mac is idle.
It never happens when Obsidian is closed even if using other electron apps like VSCode.

MacOS Catalina 10.15.3
Obsidian 11.0

Please report the hardware setup you’re using in reports of kernel panics.

I have never experienced a kernel panic from Obsidian on either my 2015 MacBook Pro or my 2020 Mac Mini (non-M1). I’m almost always on an external display but I’ve used the MacBook Pro’s display, too.

(This is on 10.14 and 10.15. I’ve yet to upgrade to Big Sur.)

Yes, here it is:

Nom du modèle : Mac mini (fin 2012)
Identifiant du modèle : Macmini6,2
Nom du processeur : Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Vitesse du processeur : 2,6 GHz
Nombre de processeurs : 1
Nombre total de cœurs : 4
Cache de niveau 2 (par cœur) : 256 Ko
Cache de niveau 3 : 6 Mo
Technologie Hyper-Threading : Activé
Mémoire : 16 Go
Version de la ROM de démarrage : 282.0.0.0.0
Version SMC (système) : 2.8f1
Jeu de composants : Intel HD Graphics 4000
Type : Processeur graphique
Bus : Intégré
VRAM (dynamique, max.) : 1536 Mo
Fournisseur : Intel

Moniteurs :
DELL U2713HM :
Résolution : 2560 x 1440 (QHD/WQHD - Wide Quad High Definition)
Profondeur de mémoire d’image : Couleurs 24 bits (ARGB8888)

In past 3 weeks, my macOS crashed while using Obsidian. I have the CPU crash log and it was due to Obsidian Helper ( Renderer ) Thread.
I have never seen user space app to send a kernel panic. it’s rare. Please try to fix it guys.
Even after restart my Keyboard and mouse are not working properly.
Does anyone have the same issue ?

Here are the specs :
16 inch MacOS
RAM : 32 GB
below is my neofetch output :
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 8.46.28 AM

  • also at the time of crash i was running htop command in terminal and RAM usage was around 7 GB / 32 GB.
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I’m currently running into the same issue.

I don’t think I’ve run into this problem before, but it’s the second time it happens in just a few days.

I’ve send the crash report to Apple, but just thought it could be worth to mention it here as well.

@bright : in my crash report, it was also clearly saying this :

Process name corresponding to current thread: Obsidian Helper (Renderer)

As for the time it happened, I was testing the very new TOC Plugin from hipstersmoothie (GitHub) and I just had one note open.

I’m currently using Obsidian v.0.11.0 and as for my Mac :

macOS Big Sur Version 11.2.1

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
Processor 2,5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Memory 16 Go 1600 MHz DDR3 
Graphics Intel Iris Pro 1536 Mo
Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:	MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:	MacBookPro11,2
  Processor Name:	Quad-Core Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:	2,5 GHz
  Number of Processors:	1
  Total Number of Cores:	4
  L2 Cache (per Core):	256 Ko
  L3 Cache:	6 Mo
  Hyper-Threading Technology:	Enabled
  Memory:	16 Go
  System Firmware Version:	430.0.0.0.0
  SMC Version (system):	2.18f15

Edit : Happened one more time today few hours after writing what’s above :confused: .

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It could be possible that it because of electron . if you go on electron github issue page many people have filed issue for past 2 years on same kernel panic situation.

EDIT :
just had another kernel panic like 5 minutes ago

Process name corresponding to current thread: Obsidian Helper (Renderer)

never had issue with vscode or other electron app and now i am convinced it’s obsidian. Correcy me if I am wrong.

I’m absolutely no dev’ so I have no idea how all this works, but taking a look at the issues of Electron on GitHub, seems like there’s is something going on between Obsidian and Electron…

I’ve found a few ones quite similar (this one, for example) to the report I get when it happens.

@pch
I would like to hear what developer of obsidian have to say about it like if they are trying to resolve it or not. Because if you scroll up @WhiteNoise kept saying it’s apple court. If he is right and nothing can be done with this situation for mac user then i don’t think I will continue using this app. I love this app and literally can’t think about switching to something else but these crashes are serious and won’t touch it unless this issue is resolved.

Dev here, just want to let everyone know our side on this issue:

Kernel panics are never supposed to happen - when they do, it’s often a bug deep in the operating system’s drivers. Recently we’ve heard quite a few reports of issues with MacOS’s graphic drivers and unfortunately this isn’t something we can debug.

I understand some of you are reporting that this only happens with Obsidian, which has lead many to believe that it’s a bug with Obsidian. I’m not here to shift the blame to Apple or Electron, and we fully acknowledge that Obsidian could have been doing something MacOS doesn’t like.

For now, I suspect this might be either due to our graph view (which runs on WebGL), or plugins that deeply integrate with system level resources, such as running programs or using native NodeJS APIs.

Sadly, we are powerless to help. We do not have any members on the dev team who are professional MacOS native developers, who understands well enough how the OS works and knows tooling to debug this kind of issue. On top of that, this isn’t a reproducible bug that we can pinpoint to specific behaviors we can try to avoid from the application’s point of view.

Here’s my suggestions to users hitting this issue:

  • Report the crash to Apple. They are the only one in power to actually “fix” the issue, rather than finding a workaround. The more reports there are, the larger the signal to Apple this is a serious issue.
  • If you aren’t running the latest patch update for your OS version (Catalina, Big Sur, etc), consider trying an OS update.
  • Try to find some patterns. I know it’s hard and based on many reports here sometimes even leaving the app open could lead to a panic. But if you find anything helpful, we could potentially find workarounds that could potentially avoid touching the faulty driver.
  • Try disabling community plugins, and closing graph view panes. See if that helps.

To the guy that have kernel panics. does running obsidian with --disable-gpu help?

Today I’ll work with all community plugins and custom CSS disabled. I’ll see if it happens again.
Yesterday it crashed twice.

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Thank you very much @Licat for taking the time to answer and clarify things a little bit.

Just to be clear, I really didn’t mean to blame anyone here, I was more thinking out loud.

I mentioned the trouble with the Obsidian Helper (Renderer) simply because it pin points directly Obsidian and as the no dev’ that I am, I just thought it could help a bit :woman_shrugging: (nothing more).

As for your recommandations, I’ll continue to send the report to Apple if it happens again (so far, today, no crashes in sight :grin: and Obsidian has been open for quite some time now).

I’ve disabled the very last plugin I installed (the TOC plugin, which I’ve got through the settings in Obsidian) but left the others as until yesterday, I wasn’t really aware of this problem so I need to try and return to my “previous” settings of Obsidian and see if it happens again.
If it happens again, I’ll sadly disable everything and try to investigate further :blush: .

Things I forgot to mention thought :

  • I only have one very small vault of 32,6 Mo (130 elements) on iCloud (so far)
  • 13 actives CSS snippets and I’ve used solely the default dark theme (for now)
  • 7 active community plugins and a lot of core plugins

I never use the Graph view while working on my notes as it always seemed, to me, not very “ressources friendly”. I open it when I’m done, at the end of the day, to see my “progress”.

I’m a fairly new Obsidian user, and I really think I’ve finally found the right note taking app’ for me. So, I find those kernel panics really saddening :slightly_frowning_face: .

I can only hope, I’ll be able to continue to use Obsidian like I did before and those crashes will “go away” :blush: . I’m not planning to abandon Obsidian anyway :blush: .

Quick question here though, just in case but how do you do that ? :innocent: