freebsd man page for panic

PANIC(9)						   BSD Kernel Developer's Manual						  PANIC(9)

NAME
     panic -- bring down system on fatal error

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/systm.h>

     void
     panic(const char *fmt, ...);

DESCRIPTION
     The panic() function terminates the running system.  The message fmt is a printf(3) style format string.  The message is printed to the con-
     sole and the location panicstr is set to the address of the message text for retrieval from the OS core dump.

     If the kernel debugger is installed control is passed to it, otherwise an attempt to save a core dump of the OS to a configured dump device
     is made.

     If panic() is called twice (from the disk sync routines, for example) the system is rebooted without syncing the disks.

RETURN VALUES
     The panic() function does not return.

BSD
								  August 11, 1995							       BSD