Security Update 2020-005

[Earl Urley]

Is anyone getting really low free RAM after applying this update? Activity Monitor says I have 12 GB of RAM used right after I launch it after logging in.

There seems to be no app or process that is claiming that RAM, yet it's marked as used.

Already tried sudo purge, cleaning out unused launch agents.

iStat Menus says 11 GB of app memory is being used. How does that happen? Before that was how much free RAM I had when starting up!

Tried trimming my login items to zero, still no improvement.

 

[josehill]

Similar situation here. I'm guessing it's just aggressive caching or something similar. "Memory pressure" is quite low on my system, even though there seems to be a lot of memory allocated to apps. If you're not experiencing significant memory pressure, I'd be inclined not to worry about it.

 

[Earl Urley]

I am going to worry about it because after only launching 3 or 4 applications, Activity Monitor shows me starving for RAM and paging memory out to disk.

It wasn't like this before the update; when I started I usually had 10-11 GB free, now I only seem to get 4-5 GB free at startup.

Maybe they'll pull it and put up another?

 

[Erehy Dobon]

I'm seeing less than 5 GB of active RAM after I boot Mojave Security Update 2020-005 with my Mac mini 2018 (16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD).

Sounds like the two of you need to examine what extensions, LaunchAgents, and other items are being fired up during the startup.

 

[josehill]

I am going to worry about it because after only launching 3 or 4 applications, Activity Monitor shows me starving for RAM and paging memory out to disk.

Is the paging io very high, i.e. constant swapping, or is it just periodically compressing and moving low priority content to swap, which is normal even for large free memory? How are you measuring paging velocity? What does your memory pressure look like?

I'm on a 16 GB mid-2012 13" MBP, and it's showing 12 GB used, too, but I'm able to open my usual collection of RAM-intensive apps and multiple browsers with far too many open tabs. As I open more apps, free vs used memory isn't changing significantly, and I'm not noticing any performance differences after the update.

At least for my system, that's why I'm inclined to think it's either a change in how Apple is reporting memory usage, or perhaps a change in how Apple allocates memory by default. Of course, your system may be behaving completely differently from mine and for different reasons. I'm just offering ideas of things to look at.

Of course, I reserve the right to retract my comments if my system starts running like crap tomorrow.

 

[Earl Urley]

I'm seeing less than 5 GB of active RAM after I boot Mojave Security Update 2020-005 with my Mac mini 2018 (16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD).

Sounds like the two of you need to examine what extensions, LaunchAgents, and other items are being fired up during the startup.

I just literally disabled all LaunchAgents and other daemons using Launch Control from soma-zone.

Still no improvement.

Also tried booting in Safe mode and there's still about the same amount of free RAM.

 

[George Dawes]

I can't see it yet but 004 ( popped up today ) used up 10 gigs of ram that I only got back via memory clean

 

[chromotype]

Is anyone getting really low free RAM after applying this update? Activity Monitor says I have 12 GB of RAM used right after I launch it after logging in.

Yes, I'm seeing the same thing on two different macs running Mojave that received update 2020-05: a macbook pro with 8GB ram, and a mac mini with 20GB RAM.

On the macbook, after booting up with just Activity Monitor running, memory is already being paged out - Activity Monitor is currently seeing 6.5GB used, 1.55GB cached, 1.53GB compressed, 76MB swap. I'm pretty sure this used to be ~4GB used, ~700MB cached, and no compressed or swap with the same scenario. The macbook is pretty much unusable right now.

On the mac mini, just after booting up with the following open: chrome (4 tabs open), Terminal and Activity monitor, I'm seeing 13.57GB used, 5.67GB cache, no compressed or swapped. Previously, this would be ~6GB used, ~1GB cached.

I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like many processes are much bigger than I remember them. For example, Terminal (just a single tab open, with no scrollback history) is taking up 67MB. I'm pretty sure this used to be about 10-20MB. Scrolling through Activity Monitor, there are *way* more processes in the 20-60MB memory usage range than I remember. Unfortunately, I don't have an easy way of comparing them to the before-update memory usage. If I was to make an uninformed guess, I'd say that some library has been shipped with debug code enabled that is causing all of these processes to use up more memory than before the update.

 

[pierrespartan]

Is anyone getting really low free RAM after applying this update? Activity Monitor says I have 12 GB of RAM used right after I launch it after logging in.

[...]

Hello everyone,

Just to give my feedback too, I experience the same issue with this security update on Mojave. On my r-MBP 13" 8Go, before the update (and after booting) free memory was about 65% and after it remains only 25% free (with 3 Go of compressed coming from nowhere).

(statistics using iStat Menu)

NVRAM reset and re-booting multiple times didn't help.

 

[Minipudding]

Is anyone getting really low free RAM after applying this update? Activity Monitor says I have 12 GB of RAM used right after I launch it after logging in.

Same. Right after boot almost all of my 8 GB of RAM is used up, and already 300-400 MB of swap memory in use. Before 2020-005 a fresh boot for me never saw more than somewhere just over 1 GB of RAM used.

Additionally, boot time is slower, logging in is slower and when doing so I'm met with a blank desktop which needs 7-8 seconds before icons finally appear. Everything feels sluggish, and applications also take more than twice as long to start up.

Looking through the Activity Monitor I also notice that practically every single process and application whose memory usage I'm familiar with are now reported to consume several times more memory. Things that previously took around 5-10 MB of RAM now consume 50, 60 and even 70 MB. It's as if everything is running in some sort of heavy debug or extended sandboxing or diagnostics mode.

I also noticed that the update was 1.6 GB in size, but the published list of changes was tiny. I know there's a discrepancy here since these updates contain a lot more changes than the highlighted ones, but I get the feeling that loads of executables/libraries/whatever accidentally had a "debug switch" flipped and inadvertently made their way into this update.

It's a complete disaster. DO NOT INSTALL THE 2020-005 SECURITY UPDATE!

 

[Earl Urley]

Funny how Apple hasn't reacted yet.. they USUALLY nip these things in the bud.. but I'm starting to believe in what that guy on the digilloyd Performance Guide website says, that Apple is suffering from 'bit rot.' He published an article last week about how iOS 14 and Safari 14 are so full of bugs it would make an anteater gag.

I've tried leaving the machine on overnight, thinking maybe it's some purging that needs to be done by the system itself.. it seems to have worked a little. I had now 8.70 GB free, 3.65 GB still being taken up by apps (only Finder is running) 2.92 GB active and 3 GB compressed?! and I'm using 896 MB of swap memory on a 16 GB machine.. if only Finder is running and I've done sudo purge, that simply shouldn't be.

Need to stay on Mojave as we have 32-bit apps we're still using at work..

I have this page open in Safari only, just one window, and it says Safari is using 1.45 GB!!

 

[Earl Urley]

On a hunch, I rebooted, then did sudo periodic monthly, followed by a weekly, then a purge, and now I'm at 10.15 GB free.. still not great but better than having macOS take up 7-8 GB of RAM all by itself for no good reason.

Also ruefully noting that the mother site here literally only mentions the Catalina update to 10.15.7, it doesn't even mention the High Sierra / Mojave security updates.

AppleInsider isn't any better, there's a single sentence at the end regarding the HS update, and 9to5Mac also dodges any mention of HS or Mojave updates.

 

[pierrespartan]

I found a solution: booting in Recovery mode, then Re-installing macOS Mojave solved this issue for me!

Now my Mac is back to normal behavior. Hope this helps.

[edit] but now I'm back to Security update 4, so I'll wait for a fix before updating again.

 

[Earl Urley]

That didn't trash any of your files or apps, did it?

 

[pierrespartan]

That didn't trash any of your files or apps, did it?

No, this just re-install macOS Mojave system above the existing one (this just overwrite the existing version, and doesn't touch to any user's files).

[edit] I just had to update Safari to version 14 once again, as it was back to the version 13.

 

[chrfr]

No, this just re-install macOS Mojave system above the existing one (this just overwrite the existing version, and doesn't touch to any user's files).

[edit] I just had to update Safari to version 14 once again, as it was back to the version 13.

Reinstalling the operating system would also remove any previous security updates as well, so it‘d probably be a good idea to reinstall the previous one manually.

 

[pierrespartan]

Reinstalling the operating system would also remove any previous security updates as well, so it‘d probably be a good idea to reinstall the previous one manually.

Oh you're right, I'm in 18G103 so I've to reinstall them, thank you for your advice!
Should I reinstall only the previous one? Or all Security update until the 4th?

 

[Earl Urley]

You should be able to just do 2020-004 after a reinstall.

 

[pierrespartan]

You should be able to just do 2020-004 after a reinstall.

Ok, thanks. That's what I've done finally and...
My bad... I re-installed the Security Update 4 (not 5 so), but unexpectedly I got the same symptoms now than using the 5 one! Same memory issue... I don't understand, in July I updated to Security Update 4, it was ok, no issue at all.

(I'm sure I'm on the 4th one, I checked the build number)

Any clue?

 

[chrfr]

Ok, thanks. That's what I've done finally and...
My bad... I re-installed the Security Update 4 (not 5 so), but unexpectedly I got the same symptoms now than using the 5 one! Same memory issue... I don't understand, in July I updated to Security Update 4, it was ok, no issue at all.

(I'm sure I'm on the 4th one, I checked the build number)

Any clue?

What shows as using your memory in Activity Monitor?

 

[pierrespartan]

What shows as using your memory in Activity Monitor?

I tried one more time the 5th update, as 4th one had same issue by re-installing it. Everything is slow again, and compressed memory goes crazy.

Here a screenshot of Memory usage just after boot, sorted by Compressed memory used:

 

[Erehy Dobon]

There is something wrong with your operating system installation. Your system with 8 GB RAM is swapping already shortly after boot ("fichier d'échange utilisé" = 281.5 MB).

On my Mac mini 2018 (i7, 16 GB RAM, Mojave Security Update 2020-005), there are zero processes with compressed memory ("compressée"). If I sort by compressed memory usage, there is nothing. Not a single process using compressed memory.

I suggest you install macOS Mojave from a bootable USB installer into a spare blank external drive for the sole purpose of reviewing memory usage. If there is a substantial difference, that would point to some sort of performance crippling software or configuration issue on your normal system drive.

Before you do that, you might consider logging into a different user account and checking Activity Monitor. There might be something specific to your regular user account that is driving up memory usage.

 

[pierrespartan]

There is something wrong with your operating system installation. Your system with 8 GB RAM is swapping already shortly after boot ("fichier d'échange utilisé" = 281.5 MB).

On my Mac mini 2018 (i7, 16 GB RAM, Mojave Security Update 2020-005), there are zero processes with compressed memory ("compressée"). If I sort by compressed memory usage, there is nothing. Not a single process using compressed memory.

I suggest you install macOS Mojave from a bootable USB installer into a spare blank external drive for the sole purpose of reviewing memory usage. If there is a substantial difference, that would point to some sort of performance crippling software or configuration issue on your normal system drive.

Before you do that, you might consider logging into a different user account and checking Activity Monitor. There might be something specific to your regular user account that is driving up memory usage.

Hum... interesting. Yes, for me too, before today everything was fine, I mean no compressed memory after boot. You told me that this could be due to a specific software? But software, even with helper programs or something similar, can't load before accessing the session right? I'm wondering that because even on startup, the Mac takes 2 or 3 times longer to boot to the session menu. Moreover, I'm currently trying the trial version of Malwarebytes (which has a helper tool too): do you think this could affect my computer this way?

 

[rlhamil]

After doing nothing interesting other than installing 2020-005 on Mojave, a 16GB MacBook Pro that could previously at least boot, login, run Mail and Activity Monitor without compressed memory or swap, no longer can; and it seems to be running anywhere from 3GB compressed on up to about 14GB compressed. And none of the different memory flavor sorts of the memory tab of Activity Monitor are showing me anything that looks huge enough to account for it.

 

[Earl Urley]

I'm in the middle of rolling back to the Mojave install from the Recovery partition; think I'll do that and stop there, also am going to scour the etc directory for any wonky .conf files I stuck there.

Also reported the bug to Apple via their feedback page, but I doubt I'll ever hear back from them.

Edit 1: Yep, that did it, back to the usual 11-12 GB of RAM free. Phew!