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inactive ram issues???

M

melow71

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 29, 2008
45
0
most of my ram at some point ends up in the inactive ram category and when I need it to run an application is takes longer than I believe it should to release the ram and my programs begin to slowdown????? Is their anyway to turn this feature off, what is the benefit of this feature, because ALL I SEE IT DOING IS MAKING MY COMPUTER SLOWER?? I actually believe it is more of a Leopard problem??

thanks--
 
What? After you use a program it frees active RAM to inactive RAM. What is the problem with that? Are you actually seeing slow downs? How many page outs do you have and what are you doing when it slows down? How much RAM do you have?
 
Are you running any Java based apps by chance like Vuze?

For example here is memory line from top before running Vuze.

PhysMem: 318M wired, 257M active, 35M inactive, 645M used, 4475M free.

Then here is an example of what is looks like after running Vuze and no other apps for a short time and then quitting.

PhysMem: 309M wired, 613M active, 4118M inactive, 5041M used, 79M free

The machine has 6 Gigs of Memory and it shows 5041M used but I can't find any process with top or ps that is using it. I just think its some sort of giant memory leak in Java or Vuze. After this the Machine just starts paging out until I reboot.

Edit: However normally inactive memory is a good thing because the system doesn't need to go back to disk to read that data(For Example, if you quit and relaunch an App) because it is already in memory, However if another process needs it, it is free to use it.
 
yea

lostngone, i think you have it. I am using vuze and this problem happens. I guess you are right, it is a memory leak and simply faulty programming.

thanks-
 
melow71 said:
what is the benefit of this feature
Click to expand...

when for example you open an application and quit it, the required ram it used to operate is now marked as inactive ram. the next time you will open it, it will open much faster, and every task will already have the resources to work. when your machine is out of ram, it just drops the ammount of inactive ram it needs. it shouldnt take longer than just using your free ram, it might be caused of a badly coded application, or something wrong with the kernel tasks

edit: yes, vuze is very very badly coded. Try uTorrent for mac (i would suggest transmission as others did, but some trackers block it so it would end up having slower download speeds, like what happened with me)
 
I'd recommend uTorrent for Mac. Its still in beta, but its stable enough for me as long as you disable DHT. You can get it here
 
brop52 said:
That would do it. Java is screwy with memory. Why don't you try Transmission instead?
Click to expand...

Transmission is a no-no with many private torrent trackers. I don't know if it has something to do with DHT or a bug in the way it reports up/down transfer stats.

uTorrent looks to be shaping up but it is still shaky on PPC based Macs
 
web Links

can anyone share with us a nice and useful articles or links that might lead to better understanding the Mac OS X memory management n scheduling matters ??

thank you:)
 
melow71 said:
lostngone, i think you have it. I am using vuze and this problem happens. I guess you are right, it is a memory leak and simply faulty programming.

thanks-
Click to expand...

Some java applications will use as much memory as you have to, in theory, speed up it's use. The problem is that this can cause problems because it can use up so much memory that other applications are harmed.

http://wiki.vuze.com/index.php/Reduce_memory_usage

#12 is what you want, it will place a hard limit on the amount of memory that vuze can allocate. I would use something more like 512, but you get the idea.
 
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