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drnkn_stylz · 02:49 PM

So lately I've noticed my MacBook seems to be running slower than it used to. Lots of beachballs and slow launch times. I checked out Activity Monitor, and the CPU usage was basically at idle, yet my memory was being eaten like crazy! I know that I would benefit from more RAM, but this seems a little extreme. In this picture the only apps I have running are system, dashboard and activity moniotr (duh).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...itymonitor.jpg

Is there a way I can clean up my system and make it run like it used to?

stefanicotine · Nov 27, 2006, 03:01 PM

I'd close all of those programs and retake the screenshot. In fact, reboot your computer holding shift (boots it into safe mode) and see if your memory is still being eaten alive. If it's fine without those programs running then it's probably iAlertU or something. iAlertU is still in the beta stages. It wouldn't surprise me if it had a memory leak.

Also, if you don't already, turn off your computer now and then.

drnkn_stylz · Nov 27, 2006, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by stefanicotine

I'd close all of those programs and retake the screenshot. In fact, reboot your computer holding shift (boots it into safe mode) and see if your memory is still being eaten alive. If it's fine without those programs running then it's probably iAlertU or something. iAlertU is still in the beta stages. It wouldn't surprise me if it had a memory leak.

Also, if you don't already, turn off your computer now and then.

I usually turn my computer off at night, and most of the time I'm going between classes.

I will turn off iAlertU and see how it performs. Maybe it is a memory leak.

Philip J. Fry · Nov 27, 2006, 03:19 PM

Well, you only have 512MB of RAM. The OS itself needs 256MB to run, the integrated video chip has 80MB set aside for it, leaving you with 176MB of free RAM for everything else. 1GB will definitely help this problem, as well as maxing out to 2GB.

pra9ab0y · Nov 27, 2006, 04:28 PM

iAlertU seems to take a lot..

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 04:51 PM

I don't see anything wrong in that picture. Nothing is using an excessive amount of memory. Also, you have 170MB of unused memory. Plus 512MB isn't really enough once you start loading other apps as has been stated above.

bowwowman · Nov 27, 2006, 07:15 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

I don't see anything wrong in that picture.

then you overlooked the 35K+ pageouts, 5GB of VM, and the 25mb of free ram

With only 512mb of ram, this problem will only get worse, unless the OP restarts his machine several times a day.....

Adding more ram is the only REAL answer, but checking apps for memory leaks wont hurt either, although the only thing you can do about that is not use them and notify the developer of the problem

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 07:37 PM

Originally Posted by bowwowman

then you overlooked the 35K+ pageouts, 5GB of VM, and the 25mb of free ram

With only 512mb of ram, this problem will only get worse, unless the OP restarts his machine several times a day.....

Adding more ram is the only REAL answer, but checking apps for memory leaks wont hurt either, although the only thing you can do about that is not use them and notify the developer of the problem

If you read my post more carefully, I did state that 512Mb isn't enough. However, there isn't anything wrong with that picture. Of course he's going to have page outs, he doesn't have much RAM. However, at the current state in that picture, he has 170MB of available (inactive + free) RAM. Also, there's a big difference between VM and what's actually been swapped out. Currently, I have zero page outs but over 14GB of VM. VM under OS X is literally virtual.

Philip J. Fry · Nov 27, 2006, 08:10 PM

I also stated that he needed more physical RAM. Also, free RAM doesn't mean much anyway. Inactive RAM seems to be more beneficial than free RAM, at least in my experience.

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 08:37 PM

Yeah, you don't want free RAM. As has been stated here over and over... Free RAM is wasted RAM.

stefanicotine · Nov 27, 2006, 09:13 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

Yeah, you don't want free RAM. As has been stated here over and over... Free RAM is wasted RAM.

Why's that?

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 09:24 PM

You're a CHDS and you're asking why?

Do a search for VM, it's been covered here many times.

stefanicotine · Nov 27, 2006, 09:34 PM

CHDS means I read a book and passed an exam. You can't learn everything at once

I'm trying though. While getting certified has expanded my knowledge and understanding of Mac OS X by quite a bit, I'm still looking for things to learn and conquer. After all, I'm only 18!

I'll be fully certified as an AppleCare technician come December 8.

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 09:43 PM

That's fair, didn't mean to come off too harsh.

Basically, if the system isn't making use of all your available RAM, what's the point of having it then. Unused RAM is wasteful. When you quit an app in OS X, the system doesn't free up the RAM, it marks it as inactive. So, if you relaunch the app, it's already loaded in RAM. Think of it as caching. However, if you load a different app, the system will replace the contents of the inactive memory with the new app.

To tie this in to the above picture, he has 150mb of inactive memory and 20 mb of free memory. Some of his no longer running apps are still cached in inactive memory. If he relaunches those, they'll load right away. But he can also load a new app since there's 170mb of available memory. People tend to focus only on the free memory stat when they should be looking at the inactive stat.

stefanicotine · Nov 27, 2006, 09:46 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

That's fair, didn't mean to come off too harsh.

Basically, if the system isn't making use of all your available RAM, what's the point of having it then. Unused RAM is wasteful. When you quit an app in OS X, the system doesn't free up the RAM, it marks it as inactive. So, if you relaunch the app, it's already loaded in RAM. Think of it as caching. However, if you load a different app, the system will replace the contents of the inactive memory with the new app.

To tie this in to the above picture, he has 150mb of inactive memory and 20 mb of free memory. Some of his no longer running apps are still cached in inactive memory. If he relaunches those, they'll load right away. But he can also load a new app since there's 170mb of available memory. People tend to focus only on the free memory stat when they should be looking at the inactive stat.

Wow, thank you so much. I really had no idea. I guess I can take less care in what I leave open then. I usually have 1.2 GB of inactive memory and 170 MB of free memory.

And you didn't come off harsh at all. I knew what you meant.

Art Vandelay · Nov 27, 2006, 10:03 PM

Well, there's nothing wrong with inactive memory. The point is not to fixate over free memory.

chabig · Nov 27, 2006, 10:04 PM

I agree with Art. Nothing looks out of the ordinary in that picture. The pagein/pageout count will always grow as uptime increases. My pageouts are over 126K right now and everything is running fine.

Chris

bowwowman · Nov 28, 2006, 07:57 AM

Originally Posted by chabig

The pagein/pageout count will always grow as uptime increases.

Then why are my pageouts at Ø (and VM is only 4.12GB) after 3 weeks of uptime

Huummm......well lets see.......oh yea......maybe it's that 2GB of ram I have in there, surely NOT!

drnkn_stylz · Nov 28, 2006, 03:31 PM

Hey sorry for not chiming in again until now.

I agree that I need more RAM and I have known this for some time now. I cannot afford 2GB right now unless I find a killer deal online somewheres.

I'm need to not use Firefox anymore as well. I started using Camino and it is a lot easier on the system, and also, I turned off iAlertU but I haven't noticed a difference yet.

freedom · Dec 9, 2006, 06:00 PM

I have a similar memory issue. I have not been able to figure out what is causing the problem. After about 12 hours of use I end up with about 22MB of free RAM. I have a MacBook Pro 2.33 with 2G of RAM. If I take a look at my memory usage with all of the applications that I am using open I have about 850MB free, then at some point you can actually watch the free RAM disappear. If you look in Activity Monitor and add up the RAM usage of the active processes it does not ad up to the total amount or RAM used.

I have a feeling it is Entourage, but can not confirm.

Any thoughts,

Freedom

mduell · Dec 9, 2006, 09:16 PM

OSX, like any modern OS, uses memory as a disk cache. Free memory is wasted memory.

freedom · Dec 9, 2006, 11:03 PM

I agree, but it should not do this to the point where it brings the OS to its knees. I have an iMac side-by-side with the MacBook with the same applications open and it maintains about 492MB free memory and if I quite all open applications the free memory gets back close to what these applications were occupying. On the MacBook Pro I can quote all of the apps and only get back to about 220MB free. I have a feeling there is more going on than just normal OS X memory usage.

Cadaver · Dec 10, 2006, 01:24 AM

Originally Posted by freedom

I agree, but it should not do this to the point where it brings the OS to its knees. I have an iMac side-by-side with the MacBook with the same applications open and it maintains about 492MB free memory and if I quite all open applications the free memory gets back close to what these applications were occupying. On the MacBook Pro I can quote all of the apps and only get back to about 220MB free. I have a feeling there is more going on than just normal OS X memory usage.

Is your iMac a PowerPC-based machine? There are memory use differences between the Intel version of OS X and the PPC version.

m_young · Dec 10, 2006, 11:26 AM

What is a pageout? My Macbook is showing 217,253 pageouts, and the uptime is just under 5 days. Is this bad?

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...7/Picture4.png

tooki · Dec 10, 2006, 11:59 AM

No, it's fine.

tooki

JKT · Dec 10, 2006, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by m_young

What is a pageout?

When the OS needs to free up RAM for an app it will pageout as much inactive RAM as it needs to the hard disk. A pagein is the opposite process, where the paged memory on the hard disk (the virutal memory) is brought back into RAM. If you have both processes happening at the same time it is called swapping (hence the alternative name for VM of swapfiles).

FWIW, if an app needs far more memory than is physically available or you have a situation where a memory leak runs away with itself, you can get "disk thrashing" where the memory is being paged out and/or in at such a rate for a prolonged period that you can hear it happening.

If you are experiencing a high amount of swapping through day-to-day use, and it isn't being caused by a memory leak, then it is a strong indication that you need more RAM.

freedom · Dec 10, 2006, 02:59 PM

I do have an Intel MacBook Pro 2.33. They only two Apps that I have used in the 24 hours are Safari and iChat. Up until 20 minutes ago I had 1.4G of free RAM. Then all of a sudden I go down to 34MB and I am swapping vm. Again if you ad up ALL of the RAM used by processes they do not add up to the RAM reported as being used.

mduell · Dec 10, 2006, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by freedom

I do have an Intel MacBook Pro 2.33. They only two Apps that I have used in the 24 hours are Safari and iChat. Up until 20 minutes ago I had 1.4G of free RAM. Then all of a sudden I go down to 34MB and I am swapping vm. Again if you ad up ALL of the RAM used by processes they do not add up to the RAM reported as being used.

The OS uses memory as disk cache. Free memory is wasted memory.

freedom · Dec 10, 2006, 08:27 PM

Do not get me wrong.. I appreciate everyone's feed back, but I do not agree that OS X runs this way normally. OSX does not normally take up all available free RAM and start paging to disk with just Safari and iChat running.

Take a look at your own system. If you have 2G of RAM and have only iChat and Safari open what do you have for free RAM when you look in Activity Monitor. I have over 100 OS X 10.4.8 Intel MacBooks Pro(s) and iMac (Intel) machines running. They all average 450MB of free RAM after an uptime of over 3 weeks. This one MacBook Pro will run for for 24 hours and then all of a sudden all free RAM disappears. Any one know of a process that would do this?

Thanks,

Freedom

JKT · Dec 11, 2006, 04:39 AM

If it is just Safari and iChat that you ever have open, then that wouldn't be normal. It is possible you are running into a memory leak in Safari that other people don't generally experience, or perhaps a Rosetta problem if you are running any non-naitve apps.

Or have you added a system hack to that Machine that you don't have on the others? What happens if you create a test user account and run that for a few days - do you see the same issue?

freedom · Dec 12, 2006, 01:16 AM

Well, I do no think it is Safari. I worked for a day with FireFox and never opened Safari and after 24 hours the same issue occurred. This is the ONLY app that I used for that day. The only other process that I think it could be is the MS Database demon. I do use Entourage, but I went a day without it. They only other APP that was used was the MS notifications. It popped up on its own due to a schedule event in my calendar.

I will try creating a new used and see what happens.

Thanks,

Freedom

drnkn_stylz · Dec 14, 2006, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by freedom

I do have an Intel MacBook Pro 2.33. They only two Apps that I have used in the 24 hours are Safari and iChat. Up until 20 minutes ago I had 1.4G of free RAM. Then all of a sudden I go down to 34MB and I am swapping vm. Again if you ad up ALL of the RAM used by processes they do not add up to the RAM reported as being used.

I was going to say it may be from the MacBook's Intel GMA 950 since it shares the system RAM, but that would not be the case with a MBP.

freedom · Dec 18, 2006, 05:21 PM

Hit hit send to fast...

freedom · Dec 18, 2006, 05:23 PM

OK. I brought my MacBook Pro up to 3G of RAM and after 24 hours I am down to 22MB and paging to disk.. I think I am going to have to resort to a OS rebuild..