MacOS Big Sur 11.6.2: Memory leak in GPU processes; Full Disk Access empty after a crash

[cfm56d7b]

Two separate problems worth sharing.

1. Memory leak in (GPU) processes. It took time to narrow down this problem and symptoms but the behavior has been very consistent. After restarting the system, the Activity Monitor reports increasing Swap file utilization and memory utilization by almost every process with a (GPU) label. My 2020 13" MBPro 2.3 GHz Intel laptop / 16 Gb of RAM / 1 TB SSD visibly slows down and then crashes and restarts during the night.

2. Immediately after the restart, all entries in System Preferences / Security & privacy / Full Disk Access are blank and applications which had full disk access are asking for it again. The second restart returns all entries in Full Disk Access.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems? Any feedback from Monterey users?

 

[davidlv]

Two separate problems worth sharing.

1. Memory leak in (GPU) processes. It took time to narrow down this problem and symptoms but the behavior has been very consistent. After restarting the system, the Activity Monitor reports increasing Swap file utilization and memory utilization by almost every process with a (GPU) label. My 2020 13" MBPro 2.3 GHz Intel laptop / 16 Gb of RAM / 1 TB SSD visibly slows down and then crashes and restarts during the night.

2. Immediately after the restart, all entries in System Preferences / Security & privacy / Full Disk Access are blank and applications which had full disk access are asking for it again. The second restart returns all entries in Full Disk Access.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems? Any feedback from Monterey users?

Don't know if it will solve your issues or not, but you could try using the Release Candidate #2 of 11.6.3 available at

macOS Big Sur Full Installer Database. Download Directly from Apple!

You can now download Beta & Final versions of macOS Big Sur 11 my new database! Every available version of Big Sur listed for quick download!

mrmacintosh.com

I would think the engineers at Apple would like your feedback on that issue too.
I do not see those issues on my 2014 iMac.

 

[nebojsak]

Did it occur under 11.6? It's been running super stable for me, and I'm hesitant to upgrade to 11.6.2.

 

[cfm56d7b]

Did more investigative work. The culprit seems to be Google Chrome Helper (GPU) and Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) processes which continue to leak memory. I disabled Google Chrome hardware acceleration but it doesn't help.

So at the moment Google Chrome may be the root cause.

 

[davidlv]

Did more investigative work. The culprit seems to be Google Chrome Helper (GPU) and Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) processes which continue to leak memory. I disabled Google Chrome hardware acceleration but it doesn't help.

So at the moment Google Chrome may be the root cause.

You may have to completely remove that Google Chrome app, try AppCleaner; <https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/>
Have you tried the latest version of "ungoogled Chromium"? Available now at <https://chromium.woolyss.com/> (click on the second "Archive" version 97.0.4692.99), based on the Chrome browser, with all Google services detached.