Programs to reclaim lost RAM without rebooting?

[Soundhound]

Sure thing. What are my ram stats? Would I take a pict of the activity monitor page perhaps?

Could you post your RAM stats? How much of it is INACTIVE ram?

 

[GGJstudios]

Sure thing. What are my ram stats? Would I take a pict of the activity monitor page perhaps?

Yes, that would be very helpful.

 

[Soundhound]

Ok great. Here you go. I took this a few minutes ago, when I'm sort of 'mid-cycle' you might say, in working in Logic. Meaning I rebooted the iMac about an hour(?) ago, at which time iStat said I had 1 gig odf ram free with logic running. At the time this pict was taken, iStat reported about 500 megs of ram free. What will happen is in another hour, or less, iStat will show 250 megs or so, and then Logic will start to report running out of ram, and I'll ahve to reboot. Thanks for all the help!!!! Much appreciated.

Jpeg is attached, not sure if it will show in the post...

Yes, that would be very helpful.

 

[GGJstudios]

For future reference, it's easier to do a screen capture using keyboard commands:

Shift-Command-3 to Capture the screen to a file
Shift-Command-4 to Capture a selection to a file​

Based on your memory status:

​

You're not even paging yet. Your Page outs are zero. You may want more RAM, but based on these readings, you're not maxed out.

 

[Soundhound]

I'm sorry, I don't understand anything you're saying. I don't know what 'pages' means. And I'm telling you, in another hour or so,, I'll have to reboot.

For future reference, it's easier to do a screen capture using keyboard commands:

Shift-Command-3 to Capture the screen to a file
Shift-Command-4 to Capture a selection to a file​

Based on your memory status:

View attachment 223379​

You're not even paging yet. Your Page outs are zero. You may want more RAM, but based on these readings, you're not maxed out.

 

[kjlee5435]

I disable the swap file but page outs still occurs.

I use this command to disable swap file.
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

and remove swapfiles

sudo rm /private/var/vm/swapfile*

after reboot I have no swapfiles but page outs still occurs.

Does anybody have a idea about this?

I know page outs means swap file writing. but i have no swapfile.

 

[yellow]

Why would you disable swap? 😕

Open Terminal, paste that in, enter your admin password, and watch the Free memory repopulate in the Activity Monitor.

I wasn't kidding. For whatever reason, using the disk usage command (du) will pull back unused RAM into the "free" pool.

 

[mabaker]

As much I loathe SL’s RAM management I would also strictly advise against deactivating the swap. It may lead to system wide freezes.

Anyhow Soundhound, read the following explanation what paging is:

OK, to summarise what it means, your computer has a certain amount of RAM, which is its "memory". It simulates more RAM by allowing extra data to be saved to the hard disk, which is known as Virtual Memory.
To do this, it breaks your memory space up into "pages". Applications that need access to data that is in memory call the data by page. If an application calls a page and it is in the RAM, then it is a "page in" occurs. If an app calls for a page from memory, and that page is currently stored on the hard disk and has to be read back into the RAM, then a "Page Out" occurs.

Pageins occur anytime something is moved into Active RAM whether that is from Inactive RAM, the swapfile(s), or another file on the hard drive.

I myself am running out of RAM on my mac with SL installed but cuzz of different reasons.

It seems that as long as you don’t have any paging activity you’re very much fine. And is Logic 64bit? I seem to recall some apps can’t address more than 2 GB of RAM unless they’re coded in 64 bit.

 

[smithrh]

I'd agree on the warning on disabling swap. It's just not a good idea. I don't even know if the way you're doing it is even effective. Too many opportunities for things to go awry.

So, back to the OT (Original Topic)....

Since SL, I've had similar issues. I've participated in several threads both here and on the Apple support discussion boards, and either people are seeing the problem themselves, or (aggravating) telling me I don't actually have a problem... sigh.

It seems like - I have no confirmation of this - that SN is fairly aggressive memory usage. For example, if I simply play a DVD in DVD Player, my Inactive RAM usage will continue to climb as I watch the DVD. For some DVDs, they'll actually fit entirely into my RAM, and I can move forwards and backwards in the title without any DVD disc accesses at all.

Now, that's pretty cool for performance. If data is in RAM, bam, it's there to be accessed with no delay in going to disk. I have no issue with this.

What I do have an issue with is that if I exhaust my RAM, say by watching a DVD, then after I've quit DVD Player and I go launch another app, I get swapping. SL just seems to want to hang onto that cached data even if it's going to cause swapping. Now, I'd _ass_u_me_ that if I've got 2.5G of RAM Inactive, then dangit USE IT when I've a) quit the app already and b) am looking to open up another app.

But no, I'm into swapping right away. It's as if SL just has to hang onto that cached data in RAM, so it needs to page it out so it can page in my new stuff.

Nicely enough, in one of the threads about this, someone chimed in and suggested simply running Repair Disk Permissions, and it works. The drawback is that it can take 3-8 minutes to run. However, many times you'll see the inactive set to free within a minute or so after starting Repair Disk Permissions, which is nice.

I also found out that running du -sx on the / filesystem will also do the trick when run as root. This is also nice, as I set up a script on my server to run that command every 60 minutes. Oh yeah, that's right, even on a server that just sits there and serves files I get swapping.

Oh well. I had some hopes that 10.6.3 would fix this, but I think this may just be how Apple wants it to work. It sure as hell gives you good performance in many situations, but it's not foolproof by a long shot.

 

[DoFoT9]

well this thread has gone nowhere.


rember.

use it if you must, though i hardly see how it is going to change anything.

the slow downs in your VMs are happening because OSX must grab the memory from the swap file and move it back into the RAM - thus why you are getting 5-10seconds freezes when doing simple things such as opening IE. this is because OSX moves things into VM when the pages in RAM are idle for certain amounts of time, more of a "just incase" scenario.

 

[smithrh]

Do you have anything of, oh, I don't know... VALUE to add?

What on earth would Rember do?

 

[Soundhound]

When I start working on the Logic project after rebooting, I have about a gig free. After working for an hour or two, it gets down to 200 megs and I have to reboot. When I reboot, it's back up to about a gig. every time. Don't know how or why, but that's the only thing that allows me to continue to work

As much I loathe SL’s RAM management I would also strictly advise against deactivating the swap. It may lead to system wide freezes.

Anyhow Soundhound, read the following explanation what paging is:


I myself am running out of RAM on my mac with SL installed but cuzz of different reasons.

It seems that as long as you don’t have any paging activity you’re very much fine. And is Logic 64bit? I seem to recall some apps can’t address more than 2 GB of RAM unless they’re coded in 64 bit.

 

[DoFoT9]

Do you have anything of, oh, I don't know... VALUE to add?

What on earth would Rember do?

haha. Rember clears the "invalid" RAM and turns it into "Free" memory. nothiing special. just makes people happy that dont know how memory really works.

 

[vevierta]

iFreemem

 

[DoFoT9]

well this thread has gone nowhere.


rember.

iFreemem

haha woopsi! i meant to use that software but used some stupid testing software. thanks for actually doing the right one haha!