This is all a symptom of lazy programming. It is usually easier to
write one line of panic() than to handle the error.

# find . -name \*.c -print | xargs egrep -c panic | sort -t: +1nr | head -15
./arch/sparc/sparc/pmap.c:118
./arch/sparc/sparc/autoconf.c:41
./kern/sysv_msg.c:26
./ufs/ffs/ffs_alloc.c:25
./ufs/ufs/ufs_vnops.c:25
./kern/vfs_subr.c:21
./msdosfs/msdosfs_vnops.c:18
./vm/swap_pager.c:18
./arch/sparc/sparc/trap.c:17
./ufs/lfs/lfs_segment.c:15
./kern/subr_prf.c:14
./kern/kern_synch.c:13
./miscfs/union/union_vnops.c:13
./arch/sparc/dev/esp.c:12
./dev/ic/ncr5380sbc.c:12

-- 
| joda@nada.kth.se   | Everything's cool and froody.
| Johan Danielsson   |                          -ZB