Kernel Panic only at night

Question

The last four nights I have awoken to a kernel panic attack. I have had none during the day or while running any apps. It only seems to happen sometime in the night while no one is using the computer. I can leave it for hours during the day, and it doesn't happen.
If anyone else is experiencing a similar situation or has any other suggestions short of doing a system re-install please let me know.
Below is the panic log: (Does this actually say anything meaningful?)
Sat Dec 3 05:52:42 2005
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x00293974): sbflush sb->sb_so already null sb=6cf7cec
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x00095698 0x00095BB0 0x0002683C 0x00293974 0x00292F68 0x00292E90 0x002927D0 0x00159664
0x0014F3A4 0x00150094 0x0013ACB4 0x0013ADC8 0x0011CF08 0x000A9814
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x015A7500)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.3.0: Mon Oct 3 20:04:04 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.6.22.obj~2/RELEASE_PPC

Answer 1

OSX runs automated maintainance scripts at night during the wee hours of the morning. There are daily, weekly, and monthly cron scripts that run. Maybe they are causing your crashes?
To find out, download a free trial of the program called 'cocktail' which allows you to run these scripts when you want to. This will allow you to see if these automated tasks are bringing down your system. Here is a link for cocktail (tiger edition):
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/download.html
Good luck,
Dave