Heavy RAM usage on 16GB

[etresoft]

the ludicrous advice for the OP that his machine's ram is constrained.

That would be ludicrous, but I don’t see where any such advice was ever made.

Whenever I see someone trashing EtreCheck, I always try jump in, correct any misconceptions, and straighten things out. I always wind up learning something new and valuable. That aspect, at least, is consistent across the forums.

 

[fedzz]

Hello, this is the report on my iMac 8GB 2015 so it is an older machine. Deleted all crap app but Do I also need to erase disk and reinstall?

EtreCheck version: 5.0.8 (5A019)

Report generated: 2018-11-30 10:43:41

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 1:44

Performance: Excellent


Problem: Beachballing


Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.


No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found.


Minor Issues: None


Hardware Information:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

iMac Model: iMac17,1

1 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-6500) CPU: 4-core

8 GB RAM - Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR3 1867 ok

BANK 0/DIMM1 - Empty

BANK 1/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR3 1867 ok

BANK 1/DIMM1 - Empty


Video Information:

AMD Radeon R9 M380 - VRAM: 2048 MB

iMac 4096 x 2304


Drives:

disk0 - APPLE SSD SM0128G 121.33 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

Internal PCI 8.0 GT/s x4 Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 [APFS Fusion Drive] 121.12 GB

disk2 [APFS Virtual drive] 2.12 TB (Shared by 4 volumes)

disk2s1 - M*************l (APFS) (Shared - 137.53 GB used)

disk2s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared - 45 MB used)

disk2s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared - 513 MB used)

disk2s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)


disk1 - APPLE HDD ST2000DM001 2.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM)

Internal SATA 6 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk1s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk1s2 [APFS Fusion Drive] 2.00 TB

disk2 [APFS Virtual drive] 2.12 TB (Shared by 4 volumes)

disk2s1 - M*************l (APFS) (Shared - 137.53 GB used)

disk2s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared - 45 MB used)

disk2s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared - 513 MB used)

disk2s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)


Mounted Volumes:

disk2s1 - M*************l 2.12 TB (1.97 TB free)

APFS

Mount point: /


disk2s4 - VM [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)

APFS

Mount point: /private/var/vm


Network:

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

iCloud Quota: 148.23 GB available


System Software:

macOS Mojave 10.14.1 (18B75)

Time since boot: Less than an hour


Security:

System Status
Gatekeeper Enabled
System Integrity Protection Enabled

32-bit Applications:

None


System Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded] 17 Apple tasks
[Loaded] 175 Apple tasks
[Running] 107 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded] 38 Apple tasks
[Loaded] 189 Apple tasks
[Running] 108 Apple tasks

User Launch Agents:

[Other] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2018-11-27)

User Login Items:

LoginItem (App Store - installed 2018-11-27)

(/Applications/Paste.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/LoginItem.app)

Paste Helper.app (Dmitry Obukhov - installed 2018-11-27)

(~/Library/Application Support/Paste Helper/Paste Helper.app)


Time Machine:

Time Machine Not Configured!


Performance:

System Load: 1.65 (1 min ago) 1.40 (5 min ago) 1.24 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 9.93 MB/s

File system: 16.55 seconds

Write speed: 400 MB/s

Read speed: 1660 MB/s


CPU Usage:

Type Overall Individual cores
System 1 % 3 % 2 % 1 % 0 %
User 2 % 3 % 2 % 1 % 1 %
Idle 97 % 95 % 96 % 99 % 99 %

Top Processes by CPU:

Process (count) Source CPU Location
WindowServer Apple 4.88 %
EtreCheckPro Etresoft, Inc. 3.40 %
Activity Monitor Apple 1.82 %
kernel_task Apple 1.50 %
sysmond Apple 0.88 %

Top Processes by Memory:

Process (count) Source RAM usage Location
com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (2) Apple 1.46 GB
EtreCheckPro Etresoft, Inc. 952 MB
App Store Apple 384 MB
mdworker_shared (16) Apple 287 MB
Dock Apple 236 MB

Top Processes by Network Use:

Process Source Input Output Location
com.apple.WebKit.Networking Apple 11 MB 508 KB
mDNSResponder Apple 119 KB 24 KB
cloudd Apple 30 KB 26 KB
apsd Apple 8 KB 14 KB
netbiosd Apple 1 KB 354 B

Virtual Memory Information:

Available RAM 2.67 GB
Free RAM 17 MB
Used RAM 5.33 GB
Cached files 2.65 GB
Swap Used 0 B

Software Installs (past 30 days):

Name Version Install Date
Templates for iWork -GN 4.1.2 2018-11-06
Quip 5.4.5 2018-11-06
DesiGN Market - Templates 3.0.3 2018-11-06
Be Focused 1.7.5 2018-11-06
Antivirus Zap - Virus & Adware 3.5.3 2018-11-06
GhosteryLite 1.0.0 2018-11-06
Tabs Saver for Safari 1.1.0 2018-11-06
Keynote 8.0 2018-11-07
Toolbox for MS Office Template 3.7.5 2018-11-07
DaisyDisk 4.6.5 2018-11-08
OmniFocus 3.1.2 2018-11-08
Toolbox for Keynote -Templates 3.7.2 2018-11-09
Toolbox for Pages - Templates 3.7.3 2018-11-09
Poster Templates - DesiGN 3.0.1 2018-11-09
Infographics Lab - Templates 3.4.2 2018-11-09
Memory Purge 1.3 2018-11-12
App Cleaner & Uninstal‌ler 6.0 2018-11-12
Numbers 5.0 2018-11-12
Memory Cleaner 5.1 2018-11-13
Disk Cleaner 1.5 2018-11-13
CleanMyDrive 2 2.1.13 2018-11-13
EtreCheck 5.0.2 2018-11-14
OS Cleaner 3.1.2 2018-11-14
Breaks for Eyes 1.1.1 2018-11-15
Malwarebytes for Mac 2018-11-17
Agenda 2.6 2018-11-27
베어 1.6.6 2018-11-27
Evernote 7.6 2018-11-27
"Malwarebytes for Mac Uninstaller" 1.0 2018-11-27
Paste 2.4.0 2018-11-27
Writer 1.6.8 2018-11-30
iA Writer 5.1.3 2018-11-30

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

2018-11-28 18:10:30 bird CPU

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudDocsDaemon.framework/Versions/A/Support/bird


2018-11-27 06:52:21 com.apple.WebKit.Networking CPU

/System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.Networking.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.Networking


2018-11-27 04:26:04 storeassetd Crash

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CommerceKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/storeassetd

dyld3 mode

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[__NSDictionaryM setObject:forKeyedSubscript:]: key cannot be nil'

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

abort() called



End of report
[doublepost=1543605730][/doublepost]

It would be best to post a new EtreCheck report. There is no way to tell what you really did during the reinstall. You may have restored from backup and restored a bunch of adware and/or system modifications. Once you wipe and reinstall, the old EtreCheck report is no good anymore.

It is difficult to say if this is a problem with Safari or just an incompatibility. Is this a website that you made? Then that adds another wrinkle. Usually you have to post the URL to such sites so that other people can try it and compare their results.

This is the newest report on my MacbookPro 16GB. I have no idea why it said I installed an 베어, have no idea what it even mean...
[doublepost=1543605926][/doublepost]

That would be ludicrous, but I don’t see where any such advice was ever made.

Whenever I see someone trashing EtreCheck, I always try jump in, correct any misconceptions, and straighten things out. I always wind up learning something new and valuable. That aspect, at least, is consistent across the forums.

I tried to post on the Apple Support Communities but it keeps saying invalid character on the etreCheck report so nobody was able to understand what I was talking about.

 

[etresoft]

Hello, this is the report on my iMac 8GB 2015 so it is an older machine. Deleted all crap app but Do I also need to erase disk and reinstall?

I wouldn’t consider that an “older machine”. You only just restarted it. Restarting will wipe out much of the data that EtreCheck looks at. It would be best to use it as normal and when you notice it beach balling, run a new EtreCheck report and post that.

Erase and reinstall is a hard question. You don’t seem to have much on there now anyway. It doesn’t seem like a big risk in terms of having to reinstall a bunch of software. But yet you do seem to have some sort of corruption. I’m not going to say, “yeah, an erase and install will fix it” but it also looks like it wouldn’t hurt either and would be relatively painless.

This is the newest report on my MacbookPro 16GB. I have no idea why it said I installed an 베어, have no idea what it even mean...

That is interesting. I would appreciate it if you could e-mail me your original EtreCheck report. Not the text report you posted, but the “etrecheck” file. Sometimes corruption or poor coding in apps can creep into EtreCheck reports. I’ve tried hard to sanitize all inputs. But in some areas, especially new ones like the Install list, I may have missed something.

You can go to the Apple menu > About this Mac > System Report > Software > Installations and sort by Install Date. It should be easy to find whatever has version “1.6.6” and tell me what it is supposed to be. Then I can try to install it myself and check.

I tried to post on the Apple Support Communities but it keeps saying invalid character on the etreCheck report so nobody was able to understand what I was talking about.

As I said above, this particular report doesn’t have anything too interesting. Your install history would likely generate the most interest. If you can run a new report after definitively having experienced some beach balling, that would be better. Even if it doesn’t say anything different, then people would still know that nothing is being reported. That is useful information.

If you get that invalid character message again, just manually delete that corrupt name in your install history. I tested your report and that is definitely the cause of the forum error.

I do think an erase and reinstall will be the most likely outcome. That corrupt app name is interesting. If it isn’t a sanitization problem in EtreCheck, or an app with a poorly-made plist file, it could be disk corruption. But that corruption could have been caused by a “clean up” app. One of they ways they trick people is by making them think that deleting those exact system-generated metadata files is going to speed up your machine.

But then, if the problem continues after an erase (without restore of apps) then it might be a hardware problem. I have seen a number of strange situations involving iMacs with fusion drives. If the mechanical hard drive is failing, you might never notice it because you are using the SSD in most cases. But that is still relatively rare. You can’t jump to that conclusion until eliminating all the other issues that are a little more likely.

 

[LogicalApex]

RAM has to be the most misunderstood piece of computing by the average user. They are prone to overbuying out of scarcity fears and no idea how much they are actually using at any given time. They also are prone to freak out whenever they see any RAM in use and opt to seek out "cleaners" and other ways to reduce RAM usage.

Meanwhile, computing has adapted to the modern reality where RAM availability has outpaced our ability to utilize it in individual programs. Back in 1998 when 64MB of RAM was a lot it was easy to be under a lot of pressure with just one or two programs running. A modern computer will have anywhere between 4GB and 32GB of RAM and very few programs will use more than 1GB of RAM. As a result, modern Operating Systems will make clever use of the excess RAM by pre-caching frequently use applications and files while also intelligently swapping infrequently accessed data from RAM to disk. SSDs have also made the performance impact of disk paging a LOT less noticeable due to their high performance with small random I/O.

My Windows Desktop has 64GB of RAM and I'll frequently see my RAM usage above 40GB when not doing heavily development or using VMs and only browsing in a few FF windows with a few dozen tabs each loaded. That doesn't mean you need 64GB of RAM to be able to use FF with a few dozen tabs across a few Windows on Windows 10...

RAM is made to be used and if you have excess the OS will find ways to intelligently use it to improve system performance for you. The same is true for many programs. If they see you have a lot of excess RAM they too can, and will, also cache things to improve performance.

My advice, ignore RAM usage for the average computer user until things are crawling or the OS is alerting you. Professionals can, and should, understand their workload to understand how much RAM they actually need.

 

[RobbieTT]

Indeed!

 

[lasteno]

same here mojave using more of 50% of my 16 gb ram.. High Sierra didn't use that much.