Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mangore · Mar 31, 2003, 03:36 AM

Alright, so, I'm using a practically new iMac (10.2.4) with a gig of RAM. I leave it running (yet idle most of the time), and have installed a few minor gui tweaks (skinadock, milk theme, some icons). Now, I noticed things were really slowing to a crawl. I opened Terminal and ran top to see if anything obvious was going on. It reported that the Window Manager was using a whopping 1.6 GIGS of virtual memory (I assume, it was under "VSIZE") Note: Terminal was the *only* app I had open and running.

This is actually the second time this has happened. The first time I rebooted and thought nothing of it. This time also I rebooted and things were reset, but I thought it pretty strange so I'm hoping someone here can tell me why exactly the Window Manager is being such a hog!

Please help! Thanks..

juanvaldes · Mar 31, 2003, 03:46 AM

remove all of your hacks and see what happens. If it goes back to normal one of them is your culprit. If you want you can add them back one at a time and find the problem.

OwlBoy · Mar 31, 2003, 10:05 AM

If you have massinova menu, it freaks out and uses as much CPU as possible if it can not contact the server.

-Owl

someone_else · Mar 31, 2003, 11:34 AM

Originally posted by mangore:
Alright, so, I'm using a practically new iMac (10.2.4) with a gig of RAM. I leave it running (yet idle most of the time), and have installed a few minor gui tweaks (skinadock, milk theme, some icons). Now, I noticed things were really slowing to a crawl. I opened Terminal and ran top to see if anything obvious was going on. It reported that the Window Manager was using a whopping 1.6 GIGS of virtual memory (I assume, it was under "VSIZE") Note: Terminal was the *only* app I had open and running.

VSIZE is useless for determing actual memory usage. RPRVT is the only mem stat that may give you an IDEA of how much actual memory an application is using.

Having said that, the window manager will probably be the most memory heavy program you have. All windows (including several hidden ones) use memory and that usage is proporational to the size and resolution of your screen. IOW, the bigger your screen and the more colors it displays, the more memory windows will use.

I've seen full size windows on my Cinema HD taking up 9MB each.

HTH.

mangore · Mar 31, 2003, 04:35 PM

Alright, thanks for the replies guys, but I'm still in trouble.

I restored aqua to it's default state (I was not running Massinova Menu), but this Window Manager is still acting up. I believe it happens slowly when the computer is asleep for a period of time. Right now (With only Camino and Terminal open) this is what top is reporting.

181 Window Man 9.3% 39:00.80 3 151 1991 400M+ 22.4M 421M+ 503M+

This is pretty excessive, right? Any ideas, anyone?

someone_else · Mar 31, 2003, 06:41 PM

Originally posted by mangore:
Alright, thanks for the replies guys, but I'm still in trouble.

I restored aqua to it's default state (I was not running Massinova Menu), but this Window Manager is still acting up. I believe it happens slowly when the computer is asleep for a period of time. Right now (With only Camino and Terminal open) this is what top is reporting.

181 Window Man 9.3% 39:00.80 3 151 1991 400M+ 22.4M 421M+ 503M+

This is pretty excessive, right? Any ideas, anyone?

Actually, your RPRVT does look quite excessive. 400MB is a lot. You must have a whole lot of windows open. Or something wacky is going on. Have you tried using Quartz Debug from the Apple Dev tools to see what windows are open (and what processes own those windows). QD will also show you how much memory each window is using.

Do you possibly have some kind of Screen shot program running in the background? If so, this thing could be opening transparent windows to take a screenshot and then never releasing those windows.

juanvaldes · Mar 31, 2003, 08:30 PM

I can at times use up that much RAM, when I have icon preview on and have a folder with thousnads of pics open.

edddeduck · Apr 1, 2003, 07:40 AM

Mmm.. Last time I had issues like that it was with Interface Builder.. (Leaks like a sieve and still does)

I theory sleep should not do anything as the machine and RAM is in sleep but see if you can 100% recreate it in a certain situation. But unless you have reinstalled the OS I still think it's a hack gone wrong somewhere.

Try a permissions check with Apples Disk Utility worth a shot...

Cheers Edwin