Memory leak? Please help.

[jeremy6044]

I'm running firefox, sometimes safari, adium a word processor, sometimes itunes, yahoo widgets (about 4 of them), and one or two dashboard widgets. And Time Machine.

My memory goes from about 1GB being used to 1.5GB being used, even though I've opened no other programs! So I'm wondering what's going on.

I'm even surprised that a whole gigabyte is being used with light web surfing and a few widgets being open.

[irishgrizzly]

Are you getting beachballs? If not I wouldn't worry about it.

[jbruce2112]

well firefox 2 is known to have memory leaks....firefox 3 supposedly fixed some of them which should be out soon....

[jeremy6044]

I guess I worry about it because the temperature of my macbook goes up from fifty to sixty+ degrees for no reason, too. And that seemed to happen at the same time as the memory went down.

does it have anything to do with virtual memory? It seems like every process has about 1GB of virtual memory that it's using.

i'm just wondering what's going on since I'm new to macs. I have a 19" monitor plugged in and i put my time machine drive and keyboard and mouse plugged into a powered usb hub, thinking that would help, but it hasn't changed much. Except for the fact that my computer now misses keystrokes from the keyboard.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. But rising temperatures, using most of the 2GB memory for basic stuff...just seems kind of weird for a brand new computer.

[hodgjy]

I find Safari 3 has terrible memory leaks..FF 2 is no worse than Safari.


well firefox 2 is known to have memory leaks....firefox 3 supposedly fixed some of them which should be out soon....

[killmoms]

I guess I worry about it because the temperature of my macbook goes up from fifty to sixty+ degrees for no reason, too. And that seemed to happen at the same time as the memory went down.

does it have anything to do with virtual memory? It seems like every process has about 1GB of virtual memory that it's using.

i'm just wondering what's going on since I'm new to macs. I have a 19" monitor plugged in and i put my time machine drive and keyboard and mouse plugged into a powered usb hub, thinking that would help, but it hasn't changed much. Except for the fact that my computer now misses keystrokes from the keyboard.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. But rising temperatures, using most of the 2GB memory for basic stuff...just seems kind of weird for a brand new computer.

First off, are you only looking at "Free" RAM? If so, you need to add "Inactive RAM" to that to figure out how much is actually available. OS X manages RAM differently than Windows. Inactive RAM is RAM that was in use by programs but now is not, but is being reserved in case they need it again. If a new program comes along and needs a block of RAM and there isn't enough free to give it, Inactive RAM will be given up to the new program.

Secondly, the Virtual RAM listings for processes list the Virtual RAM taken up by any linked libraries that program attaches too FOR EVERY PROCESS. Meaning that the reason that most of your processes are showing as using 1GB of virtual RAM is because they're all referencing the same linked libraries and whatnot—they're not all taking up 1GB of virtual RAM, they're just all looking at the same stuff in VRAM.

[jeremy6044]

it shows 1.26 gb used. there's very little "inactive" but thanks for explaining that to me, since i'm still new with this.

firefox shows the most use at 140 mb, adium at 40mb, and i have nothing else open except widgets and mozy...neither of which show more than 10-30mb per program. oh, finder shows 45mb...don't know if that's normal.

[ayeying]

OSX is caching the memory. I have 20 MB free majority of times from my 3GB(4GB)

[jeremy6044]

really? ahh, well that explains it! i knew there was something missing from the equation.