1 GB inactive RAM + heavy page-outs

[to1986]

You might want to try out Google Chrome. It's slightly less RAM intensive.

The problem with chrome is that its still in beta and has this odd issue with google chrome helper which eats your RAM like there is no tomorrow. I emptied out my cache yday, and that seems to helped things a little, mac seems a bit mroe stable. So it maybe worth giving it a try if you havent done it lately.

Either way there is def an issue with SL, it would be good if you guys could leave feedback with apple, that way they will realise there is a problem and will hopefully do something about it before 10.6.3 is released:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.htm

 

[mabaker]

I sent my report but doubtful they will fix the issue in 10.6.3.

Maybe around 10.6.5 we will have a solution.

 

[mabaker]

to1986, what I did now is to turn on “secure virtual memory” and for the first time since I got my SL Mac Mini it FREED the 1000 MB for other applications, I have no idea if it was just a coincidence but here’s hoping…

SL has its strange ways…

I will report back once I get through some days of testing. Of course it doesn’t excuse the mismanagement of RAM but it’s one step into the right direction.

 

[Flynnstone]

Lets clarify:
you physical memory - RAM and virtual memory - swap file on hard drive.

If a program requests more memory & RAM memory is "full", it pages out older data into the swap file (virtual memory). This is a PageOut.

If a program trys to access memory that is not in RAM the memory must be paged in to use. This is called a PageIn.

PageIns & PageOuts are slow because the hard drive must be accessed.

A high number of PageIns indicate a lack of RAM or a problem with the paging mechanism. This is appearing to be the case with SL.

 

[to1986]

to1986, what I did now is to turn on “secure virtual memory” .

where did u turn on such a feature? Do you know what it means to do it?

 

[to1986]

to1986, what I did now is to turn on “secure virtual memory” and for the first time since I got my SL Mac Mini it FREED the 1000 MB for other applications, I have no idea if it was just a coincidence but here’s hoping…

SL has its strange ways…

I will report back once I get through some days of testing. Of course it doesn’t excuse the mismanagement of RAM but it’s one step into the right direction.

Ok well I actually jsut did some v quick research on what that option is. Basically, it helps protect your data that gets swapped out to virtual memory from RAM. Things like passwords and other sensitive data can end up in plain text in the swap files if you do not use this option.

So likelihood what you experienced was purely coincidence, if anything it may slow things down having to encrypt every file. Honestly empty your cache, it seems to have worked really well for me, I am still paging out heavily, but my system is not experiencing slowdowns anywhere near as bad as before. Maybe you should give it a try.

 

[reg911]

any news?

Hi everyone,

has there been any progress regarding this RAM issue? Cause I'm also experiencing it and it really annoys me.

I'm using my MBP for calculations with python-based programs and currently I got a lot of page ins as well as page outs, although I have more than enough inactive RAM. MBP is a late 2009 with 4 GB of RAM installed naturally.

I can't remember when I first realised this but the only thing that seems to help so far is a reboot.

It seems to me as if Apple doesn't (want to) see this problem. Any idea how to fix this manually? Maybe freeing inactive RAM, although the wide-spread opinion seems to be that hassling with OSX memory management is not a good idea.

Cheers,
Marcel

 

[mabaker]

Hi!

Unfortunately this problem is still there with 10.6.3

The issue is real and ppl who even don’t have iStat installed might not even see the real CRAWLING impact it has on their systems.

To me the only remedy is now either for waiting for 10.7 or to restart the full system to get it going normally which is kind of pathetic.

 

[mabaker]

I got some news here.

Disk Utility and repairing permissions positively affects the inactive memory which is being set free into the green zone - it takes much time, tho.

If you want it quicker you just run Baseline disk scan which takes about 4 min and frees the inactive memory into the green zone much faster than the repair permission command.

If anybody could report back on that, it’d be appreciated especially if it worked for you, too.

Highy unelegant fix of a serious issue but still.

 

[smogsy]

apple wont look at istats if we are going to fill a bug report with apple we need to use there tools to show the problem

 

[snar3281]

apple wont look at istats if we are going to fill a bug report with apple we need to use there tools to show the problem

yes using activity monitor

 

[iMacmatician]

In other words, the page-outs are taking place even despite the supposed FREE Inactive RAM...

MacBook Pro late 2008 with 2 GB RAM.

I always have ~500 MB "inactive" RAM and a tiny amount of "free" RAM (right now 24 MB, relatively large). If I add up the Real Mem usage of my top page of processes in Activity Monitor (which is almost all of the RAM used), it's ~1460 MB, and stays around there. I can understand that 256 MB is being used for the 9400M, but what about the remainder of ~330 MB?

My current uptime is 5d 23h, my page ins are 1,420,000 (5.41 GB), and my page outs are 838,000 (3.20 GB).

When I do Exposé or hold down the cursor on a dock icon for the first time in a while, the system freezes for a short period of time.

Safari's an even bigger RAM hog now than back with Leopard and Safari 4 beta. That's why I don't have 50+ tabs open anymore (now in the 20's and it's not quite as bad).

I'll try Disk Utility.

 

[kjlee5435]

I think i have a same problem

I use macbook unibody model(not macbook pro).

My SL version is 10.6.3.

My mac has same problem, it has lots of swap file and page outs.

If i upgrade RAM, can i use better than now or not?

Does anybody know how to fix it?

 

[mabaker]

kjlee5435, I noticed you run some virtual machines there. Thus additional RAM would be really of huge advantage to you.

Still I see the same common RAM problem there, too. SL seems to block the Inactive memory indefinitely.

 

[penter]

I'm using my MBP for calculations with python-based programs and currently I got a lot of page ins as well as page outs, although I have more than enough inactive RAM. MBP is a late 2009 with 4 GB of RAM installed naturally.

haha you call that "lots of page-ins?"
right now i'm only running iTunes, Safari (two tabs) and Activity Monitor.
This is what I get.
Keeep in mind that this is a brand new i7 MBP, w/ 4GB RAM

I think I'm going to start using Firefox.... =/
This Safari memory leak seems to be a well-known issue.

 

[sammich]

Haha, I thought I might check this thread out, so I take a look at my Activity Monitor, and look at my page in's. I've got a pic of my disk activity as well.

7 days uptime and just browsing and iTunes. And some flash games. Oh and some c/c++ programming in Xcode, but nothing memory intensive.

 

[danilcha]

Hello, we are discussing a similar issue here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=9741739

The main topic is that inactive memory is not occupied as easily as it should (as free mem): while having 1.3 GB free memory and about 1 GB of inactive I execute:

dd bs=1500m count=1 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null

And the system really starts to write something to disk. After that inactive mem decreases and I have 1.5 GB of free mem.

 

[Freyqq]

I've experienced the same thing. I'm not sure if it's just an SL thing or OSX in general. Basically, what I've found is that when 3/4 of your ram is used and 1/4 is inactive, it starts paging out. In your case, and in my case as well, we have 4 gigs of ram...so when 3 are used and 1 is inactive, we start seeing page outs. Not really sure why, perhaps they did the math and somehow it speeds up the computer to have 1/4 of your ram available?

 

[mckyvlle]

Same here. Have 4gb of RAM, and Inactive Memory can take up half of it. Just ran Repair Permissions and I have gotten back a substantial amount of free memory. Very curious how come repairing file permissions can free up RAM...

 

[danilcha]

mckyvlle, you can do the same just executing 'purge' command in Terminal. But your computer will work slower for some time, as it will have to read everything from the disk, not from system cache. The question was not "how to purge the system cache?". The question was "why does system swaps something when I'm occupying inactive memory?".

 

[viniciusferrao]

Since I upgraded to Snow Leopard, my Unibody Macbook Aluminium is slow as hell... I'm even considered to go back to Windows, since memory management in Windows 7 is definitively better than actual MM in Snow Leopard. What a shame.

Today I've found the glory days of Leopard 10.5.5 simply removing the dynamic_pager!

Ok ok! I know, this is INSANITY. But with 4 gigs of RAM and with a DECENT memory management I'll never reach or pass the 4 gigs limit. I do some serious computing here and I really tried to f*ck up my system, expecting some kernel panic after out of ram, but the good news is: no problem at all and blazing fast speed running: iTunes + Google Chrome + RAM Eater Mail + World of Warcraft (WOOHA) + Adium + Skype and whatever else. A lot of daemons on background, etc etc.

Here is an screenshot of activity monitor with NO SWAPFILE!

Since there is no Swap, there is no place to page outs, and inactive memory will be purged on demand as it should be in normal conditions... Look at memory graph!

One more thing... there are 6.4Mb of pageouts... Don't know where it gone! Haha!

Sorry any english mistakes, but I'm really excited now with my *new* RAM upgrade...

 

[mabaker]

Very interesting things indeed.

I am experiencing the very same issue but am still wary of disabling the paging file. Did you experience some system halts yet, viniciusferrao?

 

[DoFoT9]

I think theres some sort of memory leak for Safari. I'm getting over 400+ ram usage but none of it is in wired. I only have 4 tabs opened also. The same windows/sites in Firefox results in only 40MB of ram usage, all in wired.

I'm 99% certain there is as well. No matter if the site has flash or not, Safari really starts bogging down after being open for a few hours, even with only 2-3 tabs open. VS: Firefox with close to 25 tabs open and no more than 100mb used.

you know, to be honest - from my current understanding of how RAM/VM works i do not think that there is a memory leak for SL, at least, not as bad as you are making it out to be.

for this scenario, lets say we just have safari open and do not want any more applications running. i fully support what apple has done with the RAM management of OSX. there are complaints of safari taking up >400MB, whats the problem? there is no use having free memory if you arent going to use it, may as well let an application have all the free memory to make it a better experience for the end user.

when it comes to the point where you want many applications open at the same time, the appropriate processes will kick in and either move stuff into swap, or just get rid of it. this to me, is effective memory management. the top sites is the only thing that causes my safari slow down, simple fix for it to (disable it).

as for my safari, i have roughly 25+ tabs open and it is using 372mb RAM.

^ I concur!

Do you guys have Top Sites enabled? When disabled the RAM usage of Safari drops 60%! Unbelievable.

top sites is the major cause of slow downs for me too - because we use it so often (every time a tab opens for me) safari has been produced to keep each website directly in memory, effectively having each in memory "ready to go".

Haha, I thought I might check this thread out, so I take a look at my Activity Monitor, and look at my page in's. I've got a pic of my disk activity as well.

7 days uptime and just browsing and iTunes. And some flash games. Oh and some c/c++ programming in Xcode, but nothing memory intensive.

impressive man i have no idea how the page ins get that high.

mine after roughly 30 days...

 

[viniciusferrao]

Very interesting things indeed.

I am experiencing the very same issue but am still wary of disabling the paging file. Did you experience some system halts yet, viniciusferrao?

Nothing! I've tried to "f*ck up" my system with no success... After opening: World of Warcraft + Photoshop + Parallels Desktop with XP Running + Chrome + Mail and all programns in the last screenshot, I'm convicted that I don't need the swap file! And its gone.

I created a C program with return 0 and replaced with dynamic_pager. The only thing that pisses me off: I must stop launchd to stop dynamic_pager launch tentative with this command:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

[]'s

 

[trondah]

Nothing! I've tried to "f*ck up" my system with no success... After opening: World of Warcraft + Photoshop + Parallels Desktop with XP Running + Chrome + Mail and all programns in the last screenshot, I'm convicted that I don't need the swap file! And its gone.

I created a C program with return 0 and replaced with dynamic_pager. The only thing that pisses me off: I must stop launchd to stop dynamic_pager launch tentative with this command:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

[]'s

No need to use a custom dynamic_pager. To disable permanently:

sudo launchtl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

I've also noticed the extreme swapping behaviour of SL even with a lot of inactive RAM. Disabling swap improves performance a lot for me.

For MBP with slow 2.5" drives a lot of swapping = beach ball hell. Probably not as noticeable for people with Mac Pro's or SSD's.