Something's eating RAM in 10.6.8

For some time now I have the problem that after a while after login my 4GB RAM on my MBP 2010 with OS 10.6.8 starts filling up with no apparent reason even if only a few applications are open. I cannot discern any pattern, not even in activity monitor.

Please help.

your RAM being fully utilized is a Good Thing. If you have a lot of free RAM, it's just going to waste.

What you should pay attention to is page outs. if you have a lot of page outs, it means your workflow is RAM starved and increasing RAM to maximum supported would help keep the OS from paging out to your slow HDD (assuming you're not running an SSD).

edit: the "filling up for no apparent reason" actually...has a reason. When you close an application or files the application was working with, OS X keeps that in RAM and marks it as Unused. if you happen to need that file or application, it is another Good Thing that that data is still stored in RAM as it can be accessed very quickly. To reiterate: it is good that your RAM is being fully utilized

What are the "few applications" you have open?

If it's web browsers like Chrome, they can be huge memory hogs.

Steve

I keep saying that I should make a sticky on this, but it hasn't happened yet, so...

If you are looking at memory in Activity Monitor, there are 4 categories. The tricky part is memory marked as Inactive. Memory marked as Inactive is memory that can be cleared at any time, but hasn't been cleared yet because there is no need to do so. If your leak is only more memory being added to Inactive, you don't really have a memory leak - you have a well functioning system. A memory leak is if the memory marked as Active or Wired starts to increase. If that happens, take a look at which process is using lots of real memory.

Well, thanks, but I think I have a general idea of how RAM works and I also consider the fact that "wired" means potentially free.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were lots of page-outs with many apps and windows open, but my RAM starving also occurs e.g. with Firefox surfing only.

After some time this filling up of RAM makes the machine unresponsive and I have to clear the situation by a restart. That's not the way it should be, shouldn't it.

You could try Camino instead of Firefox. It is lighter on RAM.

According to Crucial, you could put another 4GB in your MBP for $26.

You should make this a sticky, P. :D

Indeed. I have 8 GB RAM on a MBP Late 2008 model. :)

I, too, have been experiencing this of late. However, I'm in 10.8.2 w/8GB on a late 2012 MBP. I've been watching my memory usage and as the days go on the active ram increases so much that free ram is null and the page outs and swapped end up using all my SSD, whereupon I get a nice little message that says I'm out of disk space. Of course, restarting fixes it, but something is amiss.

Which app is using the active RAM?

I'm seeing a RAM issue where inactive RAM grows until it consumes all available RAM. The process that's causing this is a java server application. Running 10.6.8 on an Xserve. The server keeps running, but this is kind of worrying, especially if the issue persists in 10.7 and 10.8.

10.6.8 eating RAM and excessive page out, you say? I don't know who the culprit may be :rolleyes:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2meekux.png

I know you've got to be kidding...if not, then use the quit command instead of running every program you have on your computer at the same time.

No this is totally legit. Admitedly this after a 40 days uptime but Safari always eats up all my RAM. I could have quit Preview and Image Capture but I use the rest daily. I don't have that many applications open. I shouldn't be short on memory with 6 GB. I have to quit Safari multiple times daily otherwise I have no RAM left..

That's expected on any modern OS.

Safari doesn't know or care what your uptime is. Do you have any plugins/extension? Are you loading a lot of large or complicated webpages?

The only extension I have is Social Fixer (formerly BetterFacebook), but the problem was present before I started using it. I have the standard plugins provided by Apple, mainly QuickTime and Java, plus Flash, always up to date. I usually have a few tabs open, but nothing really complicated. Facebook, local newspaper (LaPresse.ca | Actualités, Arts, International, Débats, Sports, Vivre, Voyage), MacNN, Hotmail, plus whatever page I'm currently viewing. It used to be worse when viewing failblog so I started using Firefox only for that website. The problem has been present with every version of Safari I remember using, as well as WebKit (nightly).

You can check the consumption of memory through activity monitor. Just close the unnecessary applications running background and please check list of login items and remove as per your need.

Hope, it would work for you.