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KERN_MEMORY_ERROR
KERN_MEMORY_ERROR reports a failure while Mach is trying to obtain data from a memory object during a page fault. XNU distinguishes it from KERN_MEMORY_FAILURE: here the object indicates that data could not be returned, but a later access to the same data may succeed.
This is therefore a data-supply or pager-side condition, not simply a bad virtual address. Mach maps address ranges to memory objects and normally asks the backing object or pager for page contents when a fault occurs. A temporary inability to supply that data can surface at the point of access rather than at the time the mapping was created.
What to investigate
- The backing object's health, availability, and lifecycle.
- Any lower-level I/O, filesystem, or pager diagnostics associated with the same time window.
- Whether the operation can safely be retried after the underlying condition is resolved.
- Whether the failure becomes repeatable for the same page; a persistent pattern may indicate a deeper backing-store problem.
Do not collapse this result into KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS. The virtual address can be valid; the problem is that its mapped object could not deliver the requested page data at that moment.
References
- XNU: kern_return.h
- Apple Kernel Programming Guide: memory objects
- GNU Mach Reference Manual: External Memory Management
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