[jmiddel]

Over the last couple of months my 256 ssd went from 125g to 185g. OmniSweeper found a 60g VM folder, all files but the Sleep State being swap files, from 1 to 2 gigs each. I had to log in as Root to delete them, OmniSweeper registered the 125g, but not Get Info. Trash was emptied. I had to restart in Safe mode, to get rid of the stuff. So my question is: why is this happening and how to stop it, since this is clearly not normal. In fact this problem, if not detected early, can crash the computer when the ssd is full.

[P]

Generally old swap files are removed at reboot, and in any case be deleted as root after a reboot. Is it possible that you had never rebooted?

[jmiddel]

It was a couple of months since the last reboot, but that's normal for me, and I've never had such an excess of swapfiles. Now, since I posted, which was right after the reboot, I have 11G of them in 4 day, that's clearly not right. I may have found it, in Activity Monitor Flash Player is using 12.4 Gs of VM. It had spawned 19 threads and was using 24% of CPU. Do I have to disable all plugins in Safari so Flash doesn't launch when I restart Safari?

[P]

That would do it, yes. I would install ClickToFlash if you haven't already to disable autostarting Flash.

[jmiddel]

Thanks, it's done!

[jmiddel]

The problem is, that whenever I listen to youtube, flash is needed, and swap files accumulate. Since my last post on 6/29, 25Gs of them. The problem, when I start in Single User, is with vim/Safari/Flash, so does the same thing happen in Firefox or Chrome? Just don't need reboots that often, thanks to rock solid ML

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jmiddel 

The problem is, that whenever I listen to youtube, flash is needed, and swap files accumulate. Since my last post on 6/29, 25Gs of them. The problem, when I start in Single User, is with vim/Safari/Flash, so does the same thing happen in Firefox or Chrome? Just don't need reboots that often, thanks to rock solid ML

Join YouTube's HTML5 beta, it will require Flash far less frequently:

YouTube

[angelmb]

So, after a restart my Mac VM size is 216GB. This is under Mac OS X 10.7.5 running on a Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM.

Should I worry about it.?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

So, after a restart my Mac VM size is 216GB. This is under Mac OS X 10.7.5 running on a Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM.

Should I worry about it.?

If you mean what is being reported in top/Activity Monitor, no. If you mean the files being created and/or you are seeing a number of pageouts, yes.

[angelmb]

As reported by Activity Monitor and Terminal, there I ran "top -S" and "sysdiagnose"

Page outs: 0 bytes

Thanks.

[besson3c]

AFAIK The VM size is just the space reserved for VM and is based on your total RAM, it doesn't mean that it is in use.