Looking for a (free) system monitor app with alterting

[muzicman82]

Hi all,

We have a OS X Mavericks system that is running 4D Server with custom programming (that I didn't do). Something in the programmer's code is causing a memory leak, that is consuming all of 16GB of RAM 4-6GB is the norm. Closing 4D doesn't free it up either.

So, I'm looking for a program that can record or e-mail when used memory reaches a specified amount so we can trace when and why this is happening.

Thanks!

 

[Legion93]

Might be an inane method but have you tried opening Activity Monitor and see what is actually causing so much stress on the RAM? It should specify what activity or task is causing this issue under 'Processor Name'. You can force quite the process if the culprit is a background app or similar.

Because OSX manages memory (as does Windows) it is often difficult to tell if performance issues are caused by memory limits. Technically, you really want the OS to capture all the available memory and allocate as needed, in which case, you would see all of the memory being 'used', even though there may be memory available but not allocated by the OS.

This is somewhat analogous to what is happening in OSX and Win7+. However, Apple has made it confusing in the past with many memory classifications, like Wired, Swap, Real, etc.

Luckily, you are running Mavericks, and a new feature of Marvericks is the Memory Pressure graph, described in the Apple support document here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890.

Basically, if the memory graph shows Red, you need more RAM, if its Green, you are good. I suggest reading the article for more details, but the Red, Yellow, Green is a great visual tool to help guide where you might be seeing problems.

Depending on your model, I have personally found Macs suffer more from hard drive access speed than memory limits, so an SSD, if your Mac does not have one, has a huge impact.

In addition, I would suggest running a diagnostic test or even a clean install if all else fails.

 

[muzicman82]

Might be an inane method but have you tried opening Activity Monitor and see what is actually causing so much stress on the RAM? It should specify what activity or task is causing this issue under 'Processor Name'. You can force quite the process if the culprit is a background app or similar.

Because OSX manages memory (as does Windows) it is often difficult to tell if performance issues are caused by memory limits. Technically, you really want the OS to capture all the available memory and allocate as needed, in which case, you would see all of the memory being 'used', even though there may be memory available but not allocated by the OS.

This is somewhat analogous to what is happening in OSX and Win7+. However, Apple has made it confusing in the past with many memory classifications, like Wired, Swap, Real, etc.

Luckily, you are running Mavericks, and a new feature of Marvericks is the Memory Pressure graph, described in the Apple support document here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890.

Basically, if the memory graph shows Red, you need more RAM, if its Green, you are good. I suggest reading the article for more details, but the Red, Yellow, Green is a great visual tool to help guide where you might be seeing problems.

Depending on your model, I have personally found Macs suffer more from hard drive access speed than memory limits, so an SSD, if your Mac does not have one, has a huge impact.

In addition, I would suggest running a diagnostic test or even a clean install if all else fails.

Thanks for the info. We've been down this path though. The system does have a Samsung 840 PRO SSD that I put in a couple years ago. It runs great. When all of the RAM is used up like this, things start to fail, system gets sluggish, and closing almost all processes doesn't free it up. It happens from some script or routine that is poorly coded in 4D (which if you're not familiar is a database framework like Microsoft Access).

 

[Legion93]

Have you thought of doing a clean install at all? I know it is a last resort but a modified system code can cause stability issues. Seems like 4D server has existing memory leak issues, according to other users.