1 GB inactive RAM + heavy page-outs

[DoFoT9]

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.

fwiw - my MBP with 2GB RAM handles RAM management ALOT better then my iMac w 4GB RAM.

 

[viniciusferrao]

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.

Gonna try this now. Performance gains are awesome...

Thanks.

PS: Windows MMU is much better than Mac OS X MMU... what a shame.

 

[00christian00]

Gonna try this now. Performance gains are awesome...

Thanks.

PS: Windows MMU is much better than Mac OS X MMU... what a shame.

Noooooooo,you must be crazy.Osx memory management is perfect,it must be a issue with your mac for sure.
Sorry Sir Jobs,forgive this unbeliever....

Seriously,osx ram management is worse even than win xp.
Can't believe none is complaining,most users here should be really single taskers...

EDIT
How do you guys handle the problem that when disabling the dynamic pager SL crash?
I use some software to periodically free ram,but still sometimes it does freeze(Photoshop and VMWare are real RAM eater,and Safari is a damn RAM worm hole!).
I am saving up to buy 8GB of RAM,but still it's ridiculous that 4GB is not enough.
I had 3GB on my old notebook running on Windows 7 and I could handle 2-3 times the workload I have now without slowdown

 

[stevemiller]

thank god people are finally starting to talk about this memory issue.

its driving me insane using after effects, photoshop, 3d apps (and its definitely not a simple 'get more memory issue' because it worked fine under 10.5).

i desperately want to try the suggestions offered by viniciusferrao and trondah to disable the dynamic pager, but i don't wanna screw up my system in the process. so to clarify, running:

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

this will disable the dynamic pager, and my computer will actually start using some of the gobs of inactive memory are showing in activity monitor?

worst case scenario things hang and i lose unsaved work? and if i reboot is the pager still disabled or do i have to do anything extra to re-enable it? if i'm asking these questions am i way out of my league to even be attempting this stuff?

you'll be my heros if this is actually works!

 

[markturnip]

Think I'm having a similar issue. Seems to happen if I have a lot of windows with a number of tabs open & then sleep my computer & wake again...

 

[trondah]

(and its definitely not a simple 'get more memory issue' because it worked fine under 10.5).

Absolutely, 4GB should be enough for normal use. I've been running without swap for a long time now without a single issue. The system is more responsive!

i desperately want to try the suggestions offered by viniciusferrao and trondah to disable the dynamic pager, but i don't wanna screw up my system in the process. so to clarify, running:

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

this will disable the dynamic pager, and my computer will actually start using some of the gobs of inactive memory are showing in activity monitor?

Yes that's right. Don't worry you can turn it back on by using the same command with "load" instead.

worst case scenario things hang and i lose unsaved work? and if i reboot is the pager still disabled or do i have to do anything extra to re-enable it? if i'm asking these questions am i way out of my league to even be attempting this stuff?

you'll be my heros if this is actually works!

Yes the command above turns it off completely. Run it shortly after a reboot before the system have started swapping and then reboot again.

 

[00christian00]

This is the correct command :

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

It's launchctl not launchtl

 

[viniciusferrao]

Well... after months running without SWAP, I'm a happy apple user again...

But with Safari 5 release I was thinking in give it a try, and I question: "What the **** are you doing Apple?"

Man, really: WTF!

Apple has become a freaking RAM Eater Softhouse? This pisses me off.

After 15 minutes of Safari usage I get this:

730Mb of Real Memory? Ok... this is 19% of my total RAM (4Gigs)

How an computer running a browser, a mail client, skype, a music player and a twitter client can eat up to 4 gigs with REAL usage?!?! This is insane.

Apple folks gonna kill me, but if it was Windows or Linux, I'll be at 2 gigs barrier at maximum. This is insane.

Snow Leopard really sucks at MMU. What a shame, I considered to rollback to good Leopard days when 2Gb was enough to run Mac OS X.

[]'s

 

[trondah]

How do you guys handle the problem that when disabling the dynamic pager SL crash?

I've been running without dynamic_pager for months, no crashes here.

Apple has become a freaking RAM Eater Softhouse? This pisses me off.

After 15 minutes of Safari usage I get this:

Doesn't seem normal at all. Mine is at 350MB... 6 extensions enabled and a few tabs.

 

[penter]

Well... after months running without SWAP, I'm a happy apple user again...
But with Safari 5 release I was thinking in give it a try, and I question: "What the **** are you doing Apple?"
Man, really: WTF!
Apple has become a freaking RAM Eater Softhouse? This pisses me off.
After 15 minutes of Safari usage I get this:

730Mb of Real Memory? Ok... this is 19% of my total RAM (4Gigs)
How an computer running a browser, a mail client, skype, a music player and a twitter client can eat up to 4 gigs with REAL usage?!?! This is insane.
Apple folks gonna kill me, but if it was Windows or Linux, I'll be at 2 gigs barrier at maximum. This is insane.
Snow Leopard really sucks at MMU. What a shame, I considered to rollback to good Leopard days when 2Gb was enough to run Mac OS X.
[]'s[/QUOTE]
Sry guys, this is out of topic, but i think i just found someone whom I haven't seen in a while...
Vinicius, this is Gabriel Ferrão. Are you who I think you are? Is it really you?! lol

 

[DoFoT9]

730Mb of Real Memory? Ok... this is 19% of my total RAM (4Gigs)

I honestly don't know what you are expecting here. You disable one of the main, important features of the OS and get angry hen it doesn't work well for you?

Do you believe in the MHz myth too? Because you seem to of the opinion that less memory usage is better.. Why does it matter if all the RAM is being used when all you are doing is basic computing? That means that the computer is performing at its best level for you. Safari uses a lot of swap file (based on time) space and if you disable it where else do you expect it to go?

 

[Maltkvist]

Any updates on this?

I tried disabling that dynamic pager, but it just said in the terminal "error unloading dynamic pager" something.

 

[mulo]

these guys are whining too much, I've had safari use 3.2GB ram.

it gets funnier when I have 1GB swap wile having 2GB ram free, and yes its free, not inactive.

 

[Maltkvist]

Safari is fine for me, i'm just curious about the inactive memory. Why my imac doesn't use it.
I read somewhere that inactive memory is the same as free memory, but how come I have like 32mb free memory and 1gb inactive?

Oh, i'm very new to mac so go easy on me

 

[mulo]

inactive memory is memory that has been in use but isn't any more. if it becomes nessecary again its just reactivated, if the space is required for something else it gets overwritten.

 

[DoFoT9]

inactive memory is memory that has been in use but isn't any more. if it becomes nessecary again its just reactivated, if the space is required for something else it gets overwritten.

i couldnt help but LOL at that.

 

[vansouza]

My hard drives were beating a drum beat today doing God knows what. Then I found this forum thread; which led me to close Safari reboot and load and run the Web Kit build of Safari instead.

So far memory use is normal, meaning good and not normal for regular Safari.

Color me happy that I do not have to use FF.

Thanks to all here for shining some light on this issue.

[Edit] my page outs have dropped from hundreds of thousands to 1 and the swap from 4gigs to 64k; that has to mean something ...

 

[mabaker]

It seems that the newest .5 release has FINALLY addressed the horrendous issues of RAM management in snow leopard.

I am not saying the problem is fully solved but it’s being alleviated by the smaller RAM footprint of the system upon the first boot.

This issue has been driving me crazy and I couldn’t praise Windows more for its stupendous RAM/paging handling and while it’s still the ultimate leader in this respect, I see some improvements that may gradually bring Snow Leopard in line with… Leopard. Far cry from Tiger snappiness, tho.

 

[DoFoT9]

It seems that the newest .5 release has FINALLY addressed the horrendous issues of RAM management in snow leopard.

I am not saying the problem is fully solved but it’s being alleviated by the smaller RAM footprint of the system upon the first boot.

This issue has been driving me crazy and I couldn’t praise Windows more for its stupendous RAM/paging handling and while it’s still the ultimate leader in this respect, I see some improvements that may gradually bring Snow Leopard in line with… Leopard. Far cry from Tiger snappiness, tho.

i ended up upgrading to 12GB for my iMac - which seemed to fix most of the issues i was having. i havent upgraded to 10.6.5 yet, so do yu think its worth it?