[tkmd]

I have the following programs open-
finder
firefox
weatherman X
iTunes
entourage

I tried to encode a cd this AM with "Handbrake" - a quick look at the top shell command shows I have only 13 MB left as free and a 33600/3200 PI /PO. whats going on? 1.25 GB RAM with only these programs running I should not be paging out at all.

The computer recognizes the RAM- shoyuld I re-install the system ( with the sys restore disk?) in order to prehaps catch this cause?

Suggestions?

BTW I use MacJanitor 3-4 x a day and running these programs only yeild me about 400-600MB (!) free RAM.

[Earth Mk. II]

Less than 1/10 of the memory paged out has been paged back in to RAM.

I'd look for memory leaks in those applications. I wouldn't worry about the system - the system's working like it should. But look in top - if the "RPRVT" part is obscenely high, then that application probably has a leak in it.

[tkmd]

Ill do that. I think it could only be acouple of programs- firefox or the handbrake. I had to force quit HB a couple of times so I woulder if by doing that- if it replaced the memory back into free instead of the inactive pile.

Thanks for that tip (about the RPRVT) ill keep an eye on it- BTW what does it mean?

[Earth Mk. II]

yeah, I've never used Handbreak or Firefox .9 - so those could be the culprits.

RPRVT is the "real private" RAM, I believe. It's the amount of RAM an applications private libraries are actually using. This probably is the closest figure to OS 9's style of reporting memory usage.

[RayX]

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[protege]

I thought *NIX machines took everything and placed it into memory, like if you wanted to read a 10 Mb txt file, the whole text file would be paged into memory and kept there incase you needed it again, along with programs, and then paged out when it wasn't used or some other program that was being used needed the space. If you had enough memory, the 10 Mb txt file would stay in memory indefinently along with the txt editor. Could be wrong though.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by protege:
I thought *NIX machines took everything and placed it into memory, like if you wanted to read a 10 Mb txt file, the whole text file would be paged into memory and kept there incase you needed it again, along with programs, and then paged out when it wasn't used or some other program that was being used needed the space. If you had enough memory, the 10 Mb txt file would stay in memory indefinently along with the txt editor. Could be wrong though.

My knowledge of Darwin memory management is limited, but I'd be awful surprised if it just stored everything in virtual memory forever even if it wasn't being used and another program needed the space. Eventually it would have to swap out the entire contents of your drive -- onto your drive.

[Moonray]

Who runs macjanitor 4 times a day should not worry about such stuff.

-

[Person Man]

Originally posted by tkmd:
I had to force quit HB a couple of times so I woulder if by doing that- if it replaced the memory back into free instead of the inactive pile.

When OS X is done using some memory, it gets marked inactive, just in case the program that was using it needs to use it again... if something else needs it, then it will be used. "Inactive" memory is just as available to other programs as "free" memory is.

[bradoesch]

Remember, FireFox is at version 0.9. There's a reason they haven't reached 1.0 yet. BTW, I use and love FireFox, but whenever I use early/beta/prerelease software I'm ready for anything.

[awaspaas]

Originally posted by tkmd:
BTW I use MacJanitor 3-4 x a day

Jeezus dude, do you wash your hands every 5 minutes?

[Ω]

Originally posted by awaspaas:
Jeezus dude, do you wash your hands every 5 minutes?

I'm surprised he can even type on a keyboard, with all those nasty germs!

[tkmd]

I realized why I was constantly running outta of RAM ( ie getting page outs). Firefox (v.90) would over a course of a day, especially usining multiple windows, would horde almost 300-350 MB of ram. closing the app when I was done with it throughout the day helped trememdously with lowering my RAM usage. I hope they fix this soon.

[lenox]

edit: random side note for no purpose at all

Handbrake's one of those ram-intensive apps that will use all the ram and cpu it can to get the job done. Transcoding is not easy work for your computer to handle.

[Cadaver]

Don't forget that some pageouts are completely normal for OS X, no matter how much RAM you have. I've got 2.5GB in my G5, and there are still some pageouts. Its supposed to occur.

The issue is when the # of pageouts is a significant percentage of your pageins, and your free RAM is running low. The current number of active pageouts will be the number in parentheses, such as:
110409(0) pageins, 21240(0) pageouts

If you're actively paging out, the (#) will be non-zero.
Note that the above pagein/out is from my 12" PB with 768MB of RAM. It's been running 4 days, multiple apps open, large PowerPoint 2004 files, etc.

Unless your machine is running abnormally slow, don't obsess about it. Unix's/Linux's VM system is such that something will always be paged out, no matter how much real RAM you have.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
The issue is when the # of pageouts is a significant percentage of your pageins, and your free RAM is running low. The current number of active pageouts will be the number in parentheses, such as:
110409(0) pageins, 21240(0) pageouts

I just took a look at my top output:

Processes: 67 total, 2 running, 65 sleeping... 171 threads 12:30:41
Load Avg: 0.31, 0.20, 0.20 CPU usage: 0.8% user, 8.6% sys, 90.6% idle
SharedLibs: num = 131, resident = 33.9M code, 3.81M data, 10.3M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 10674, resident = 154M + 7.55M private, 77.3M shared
PhysMem: 124M wired, 221M active, 185M inactive, 530M used, 493M free
VM: 6.44G + 93.4M 242292(0) pageins, 1264753(0) pageouts

Something doesn't look right as my pageouts are 5 times my pageins. My machine has 1GB of ram, so I would think it would look like your machine (pagein/pageout ratio). My machine has been up for 4 1/2 days. Any thoughts on why my page out rate is so high?

[tkmd]

Could be a couple of things- You could have been running a program that was depleteing your ram and now has released it. Or the depletion may have come from you running alot of programs. But this the ratio so skewed it looks like perhaps you where doing installation of program(s) and during optimization had run out of physical RAM.

Program wise- look at third party programs and beta's. A high 'RPRVT' value on the -top function is a good clue to a RAM leak.

Hope this helps.

[OzarkMtn]

What are Page Faults?

[msuper69]

Originally posted by OzarkMtn:
What are Page Faults?

When the system needs to access something that is not currently stored in physical RAM, i.e. the information has been paged out to disk. That will cause a page fault and result in the OS retrieving the data from disk and loading it into physical RAM.

[suthercd]

Using the page-out info alone is not a useful indicator of memory function. For instance, notice the increase in page-out when you download a large block of data to your drive. Moving data from physical memory to disk is called a page out. You are loading date into a block/page of memory via an input port and that data is written to a physical drive. The algorithms used for memory management by the OS X XNU kernel are .... very involved/complex. Interesting stuff to dig into. How to make it more stable, faster, etc.

Page faults are a normal part of the task of managing virtual memory.

Craig