Mavericks and RAM

[richsadams]

Memory Leaks?

In my experience with an '08 iMac, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD performance is fine.

HOWEVER...I noted that with DP1 memory usage was higher than 10.8, particularly after all applications were closed. It seemed to improve initially with DP2, however after a few days of normal use it's back to being a memory hog even with only one application running, Activity Monitor (excluding Dropbox, Finder, etc.)

Here are examples after about 72 hours of uptime then one minute of uptime. Again, the only app running is Activity Monitor.

There doesn't seem to be any one or combination of apps that drive the memory up and then remain after it closes.

The one thing I see is that the file cache is very high and remains there until I reboot. The purge command no longer works so rebooting is the only way to get it down to "normal" now.

Anyone else seeing something similar?

Any advice about how to address it would be most welcome. TIA!

 

[ElectricSheep]

In my experience with an '08 iMac, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD performance is fine.

HOWEVER...I noted that with DP1 memory usage was higher than 10.8, particularly after all applications were closed. It seemed to improve initially with DP2, however after a few days of normal use it's back to being a memory hog even with only one application running, Activity Monitor (excluding Dropbox, Finder, etc.)

Here are examples after about 72 hours of uptime then one minute of uptime. Again, the only app running is Activity Monitor.

Image

Image

There doesn't seem to be any one or combination of apps that drive the memory up and then remain after it closes.

The one thing I see is that the file cache is very high and remains there until I reboot. The purge command no longer works so rebooting is the only way to get it down to "normal" now.

Anyone else seeing something similar?

Any advice about how to address it would be most welcome. TIA!

This is entirely normal behavior, and you shouldn't have any concerns as long as Swap Used remains zero.

 

[richsadams]

This is entirely normal behavior, and you shouldn't have any concerns as long as Swap Used remains zero.

Thanks for that. It's entirely different than what I was seeing with 10.8 (or 10.7, etc.) wherein when no apps were in play I'd have about 4GBs of free memory at idle. Now it's often less than 1GB.

I'm seeing similar readings on my late 2010 MacBook Air (OS X 10.9, 4GB RAM) and without any apps running it's showing 3.8GB of used memory and a swap file of 700MB. Again, that never happened with v10.8.

Obviously something has changed (memory compression or whatever)...just not sure if it's for the better or worse but when the swap file is being used it doesn't seem like it's for the better.

 

[writevli]

Hi guys,

Regarding unexpected RAM usage, since I've installed Mavericks I've realised a big decrease in performance, which is quite annoying using simple tasks. My activity monitor shows a kernel_task that I may not quit and takes up all the memory. Anyway to terminate this? And what is this?

Thanks for your replies

 

[joyless]

Image

Hi guys,

Regarding unexpected RAM usage, since I've installed Mavericks I've realised a big decrease in performance, which is quite annoying using simple tasks. My activity monitor shows a kernel_task that I may not quit and takes up all the memory. Anyway to terminate this? And what is this?

Thanks for your replies

I'm having exactly the same issue. System is sometimes almost unresponsive or very laggy at best. Kernel_task eats ~2.5GB of ram (and I have only 4GB installed).

 

[w0lf]

Image

Hi guys,

Regarding unexpected RAM usage, since I've installed Mavericks I've realised a big decrease in performance, which is quite annoying using simple tasks. My activity monitor shows a kernel_task that I may not quit and takes up all the memory. Anyway to terminate this? And what is this?

Thanks for your replies

Kernal_task is basically what runs everything else on the system. You can not kill kernal_task because the system can not run without it, everything is launched under the kernal_task.

However what you've show is not normal at all. Clearly something is going wrong, you need to do a re-install. kernal_task should generally run around 600mb - 1gb on a system with 8gb of ram.

 

[richsadams]

Kernal_task is basically what runs everything else on the system. You can not kill kernal_task because the system can not run without it, everything is launched under the kernal_task.

However what you've show is not normal at all. Clearly something is going wrong, you need to do a re-install. kernal_task should generally run around 600mb - 1gb on a system with 8gb of ram.

Agreed. Kernel task averages around 600MB on my Late '10 MacBook Air (1.6GHz, 4GB RAM) and things are running normally if not a little faster with Mavericks.

However with Mavericks on my '08 iMac (3.06GHz, 6GB RAM) kernel task was considerably higher...as much as 2.5GBs to 3GBs IIRC.

Due to Mavericks incompatibility with several third-party applications I use regularly I did a fresh install of Mt. Lion on my iMac yesterday. FWIW kernel task is running around 360MB's now (again, under Mt. Lion).

 

[writevli]

Due to Mavericks incompatibility with several third-party applications I use regularly I did a fresh install of Mt. Lion on my iMac yesterday. FWIW kernel task is running around 360MB's now (again, under Mt. Lion).

Thanks for all the reply guys. However backing up my system might take quite some time. Is it possible just to launch the Mt Lion app installation and install it over Mavericks? Does this replace OS mavericks or does it add it upon it still keep traces of Mavericks? Meaning, will the kernel_task high RAM issue be resolved without doing a fresh Mt Lion install?

 

[w0lf]

Thanks for all the reply guys. However backing up my system might take quite some time. Is it possible just to launch the Mt Lion app installation and install it over Mavericks? Does this replace OS mavericks or does it add it upon it still keep traces of Mavericks? Meaning, will the kernel_task high RAM issue be resolved without doing a fresh Mt Lion install?

You really should just make a backup of all your data and do a clean install. Regardless of the time it takes, it will be worth it, whatever you're experiencing now is not how the system should be working.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1601972/
http://osxdaily.com/2013/06/12/make-boot-os-x-mavericks-usb-install-drive/

If you have extra space (like 30-40GB) you could just make a new partition and do a clean install on that to test if things work out better for you on a fresh install.

 

[richsadams]

Thanks for all the reply guys. However backing up my system might take quite some time. Is it possible just to launch the Mt Lion app installation and install it over Mavericks? Does this replace OS mavericks or does it add it upon it still keep traces of Mavericks? Meaning, will the kernel_task high RAM issue be resolved without doing a fresh Mt Lion install?

IIRC if you try to install an older OS over a newer one you'll just get an error message. So as w0lf recommends, you'll need to do a clean install. You could try a fresh install of Mavericks or if you want to revert to Mt. Lion:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17494037/
http://www.cultofmac.com/180925/how-to-make-a-bootable-disk-or-usb-drive-of-os-x-mountain-lion/
http://liondiskmaker.com

Whenever I perform a fresh installation I use SuperDuper to clone my computer's drive, make a Time Machine backup as well and then perform a fresh install and import content from TM and my cloned drive.

 

[me43]

I have watched my kernel_task climb throughout the day from about 700mb this morning to currently 2GB. My computer is a 2011 iMac base model with 4Gb of ram. I am sure that this can not be normal considering it is using half of the ram installed in the computer. Does anyone know a fix for this?

 

[Watabou]

If anyone has Flux installed and running, try quitting it.

When I ran Flux, I had the memory pressure bar turning yellow and the kernel taking up 2GB+ memory. When I quit it, kernel_task returned to around 1.3GB. Made a huge difference but I'm not sure why though

 

[w0lf]

If anyone has Flux installed and running, try quitting it.

When I ran Flux, I had the memory pressure bar turning yellow and the kernel taking up 2GB+ memory. When I quit it, kernel_task returned to around 1.3GB. Made a huge difference but I'm not sure why though

You running flux 22? flux 21 leaks memory on Mavericks so the longer you leave it running the higher the ram useage gets.

MAVERICKS users should use this newer version: f.lux v22.

Read more: http://justgetflux.com/#ixzz2YWKQM8kf

 

[Watabou]

You running flux 22? flux 21 leaks memory on Mavericks so the longer you leave it running the higher the ram useage gets.

Nice, looks like they fixed it. I can go back to using one of my favorite apps again.

 

[joyless]

Can anyone report if kernel_task is fixed in DP3?
I downgraded to Mountain Lion because my MBP was unusable.

 

[w0lf]

Can anyone report if kernel_task is fixed in DP3?
I downgraded to Mountain Lion because my MBP was unusable.

I don't believe kernel_task was ever broken. If it was your system probably would run. If you were having problems it was most likely a sub process and most likely due to a bad install or a specific service gone haywire.

 

[writevli]

Can anyone report if kernel_task is fixed in DP3?
I downgraded to Mountain Lion because my MBP was unusable.

I've updated to DP3. It's not fixed, but one thing I did realise is that it's stays at 700MB when using normal apps (Mail, iMessage, Safari, iTunes, etc.)

However, every time I use a graphical app, like Photoshop or FCPX, the kernel rises like before. Even when shutting down those apps, the kernel remains its memory until restart.

 

[Spikestrip]

I really have no idea what the memory column is supposed to indicate but here they are side by side:

Image

As far as I can tell, the Memory column is for RAM usage. The Real Memory column looks like it includes file caching. This is the only way I can think of to explain the disparity between the total amount of memory used when I add up the Memory column as compared to the Memory Used value in the chart at the bottom.

 

[itsmeaf]

Purge command

if you want the purge command to work:

sudo purge

will do

At least it did for me!

 

[tualatinweb]

if you want the purge command to work:

sudo purge

Thank you, the "sudo purge" worked great, now I have enough RAM again in Mavericks.

 

[gumblecosby]

There is definitely some memory leaking with kernel task. Attached a pic from a fresh install on a 4gb system. I amazed that there is still no disk paging. That RAM compression is working well.


EDIT:
Its definitely impacting performance. This is a bug. It normally idles around 300mb and the system is much faster when kernel_task does not leak.

 

[Ian Joyner]

IBM Didn't invent virtual memory.

IMHO, that's always been true, at least since IBM invented virtual memory ~50 years ago

IBM certainly did NOT invent virtual memory. It was invented at the University of Manchester (where Turing had worked) for the Atlas I. The first commercial implementation was in the Burroughs B5000 in 1964. IBM did not 'invent' virtual memory for another 10 years. For the story, see the 'Virtual Memory' section in the following article about half way down.

http://www.ianjoyner.name/Files/Waychoff_Appendices.pdf

In fact, Burroughs did it right, something that has been lacking in most subsequent implementations.

Cheers
Ian

 

[Slumberjack]

The fact that Mavericks appears to be using more system memory than Mountain Lion is nothing to be concerned about unless you are noticing any performance issues.

In fact having "Free memory" available is a bit of a waste of resources if it could be better used for system caching until required by an application.

What's the point of paying for 8G and having 4G free all the time?

Mavericks just seems to be more intelligent in ram usage than ML or at least that's my understanding.

Cheers

Richard

 

[mrmarts]

When I purchased my late 2013 13 MacBook retina I freaked out to see all the ram wasted. After numerous calls to Apple support I was left with a lingering unease and un-satisfaction with the constant memory usage.

I should have read up on mavericks on these forums , it seems my MacBooks memory pressure is fine and I can finally stop obsessing about my memory in activity monitor

I got a 16GB iMac on its way i bet all the ram will be used on that too with Mavericks.

 

[umbilical]

new late 2013 macbook pro with 8gb runs well with mavericks?
I use for photoshop, code... Im not a hardcore gamer or need for hardcore video editing... so 8gb is enough?