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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!

I did it again too, back to normal, and waiting for a fix (I'll report on the Apple feedback too).
 
I guess I really should have come here before installing this to my older 21" 2013 iMac. (Mojave 10.14.6) Wow...what an incredible mess this was. I NEVER had a problem with these updates until now, once it was finished. Boot up was insanely slow.

Desktop image, wallpaper showed up....waited 20-30 seconds, then icons showed up. But simply moving the mouse would trigger an endless spinning rainbow wheel. That would stop after 1-2 min. Click on a folder, again spinning wheel over and over. iMac was just totally unresponsive, I have NO idea what this update did.

After 1hr, I was finally to get into Recovery mode (Disk Utility ran - showed "no problems") - Then thankfully did "Time Machine" - but saw this did an image save on my HD just before I did the security update.

Backed it up from there and I'm fine now.

Of course this prompt shows up again after nice fast reboot.
NO THANK YOU, Go away!!!
nmUgZD3.jpg



UGH. I say stay away from this
 
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Ok, I had to roll back twice.. after the first clean install, I tried only installing Security Update 2020-004 (in software update it asks to upgrade 2020-005 and Safari 14.) Boom, no RAM left (actually only 308 MB free!) even with a Safe Boot.

Rolled back, then tried installing Safari 14 (didn't need reboot) and RAM seemed fine, 11.85 GB free. THEN tried a fresh download of Security Update 2020-004; I Safe Booted and ran the updater. Back to having 2-3 GB free and 9 GB of App Memory being used.

Thinking I ought to just try downloading Apple's entire Mojave installer from the App Store and then trying 004 again.

I also found a plist to disable access times and a .conf file to resize file buffers and some network tweaking, got rid of those, rebooted, but I didn't get any difference in RAM.

Waited for Spotlight to finish re-indexing, rebooted, waited again. Still plenty of RAM.

Am now going to try 005 again, but am going to backup the whole unsecurity updated volume to a disk image with Carbon Copy Cloner; seems like restoring that from an SSD enclosure will be faster than rolling back via total reinstall.
 
Glad I saw this thread and an interesting discovery:

Experiment is the following: cloning actual Mojave 10.14.6 pre 2020-005 to an external USB3 HD before applying update to compare.

Problem:

- Original SSD after fresh boot: 3gb used out of 16.
- Exact clone on USB3: 10gb used out of 16???

So, it looks that even a cloned SSD pre-update shows some bugs with memory usage.

Unless clone memory usage goes back to normal, I won’t even try the 2020-005. And, yes, the clone was rebooted two or three times but still exhibits high memory usage...
 
Same here, but I first noticed the high RAM use with Security Update 2020-004, as other state, that continues with 5
I reinstalled Mojave, then Safari 14. Memory use seems normal (10 to 12 GB free out of 16GB installed.) I have actually reinstalled Mojave multiple times over the last few weeks (some other issues I was having, but also trying to fix the high RAM issue). Right now, I am on 10.4.6, with no additions other than Safari 14. RAM, with just a few tabs in Safari, running at about 11 GB free. I installed 4, and RAM is at 2 to 3 GB free. SU 5 no change at all. Reinstalled Mojave (added Safari 14), and RAM is back to my normal. I think I am going to stay on that basic 10.14.6 system for now.
 
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My wife's Late 2013 iMac just had the same freeze... and I said: sure do the security update...
did all this:
  • Shutdown the computer, wait 30 seconds, restart the computer.
  • Disconnect all third-party peripherals.
  • Resetting your Mac’s PRAM and NVRAM
  • Start the computer in Safe Mode.
  • Use Apple Hardware test
  • Repair the disk by booting from the Recovery. THEN i searched the forum...
Will see if reinstalling OS will do it
 
My memory usage is higher on both my 2014 and 2018 models as well, but luckily not to the point that is using swap or compressing anything. Also, the performance on both systems doesn't seem to be effected either.
🤞
 
I had similar memory issues on my 2018 MacBook Pro.

I rebooted and ran an Ansible playbook that started swapping immediately. I had to kill the job. After several rounds of troubleshooting I rolled back my system using snapshot taken before I applied the security update.

The update was a disaster, but the system snapshots saved the day. Much faster than performing a wipe and re-install (minutes vs. hours).
 
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I too spent yesterday waiting for things to start after this update. Glad I found this thread and thank you for the contributions, never good to think you are alone.

One thought I had was the possibility that this problem was SIP related. My mac is a late 2014 mini, which has been updated to Mojave but not beyond. I use crontab for various tasks and was having annoying problems with SIP getting in the way so actually disabled SIP around the time I went to mojave. I wondered if , while a supported option, this had somehow broken this release, which is why we seem to be few shouting ? Anyone else here disabled SIP ?
 
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For now I rolled back to Mojave 10.14.6 with no Security Updates (SU), + Safari 14. I guess I'll let it like that, or maybe I should install the SU 2020-003? (the latest before RAM issue?)
 
For now I rolled back to Mojave 10.14.6 with no Security Updates (SU), + Safari 14. I guess I'll let it like that, or maybe I should install the SU 2020-003? (the latest before RAM issue?)
Last week, I had to reinstall Mojave 10.14.6 and apply each updates (Supplemental, each security updates going back to 2019-001 and Safari updates from 13.02). I did this exactly in the order they appeared to cure a nasty bug with the app cDock (dock customization).

To resume: a restore from TM or CCC and cDock was crashing and unusable. Doing each update incrementally cured it and memory usage is 3 gb out of 16 at boot. I obviously stopped at 2020-004 as 005 wasn’t available yet.

I repeat that my USB3 clone from CCC is using 10-11 gb at boot and obviously, cDock crashes...

Worth a try maybe.

- Each security update is easily available on the Apple Support pages.
- Safari updates could be found here: https://mac.filehorse.com/download-safari/13550/
- Apple security patches history: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
 
I can‘t say this enough times.........
Wait at least a week or two before installing any SU (let the impatient ones find the problems).
There always seems to be an issue these days.
 
Same thing happened to me!
The update took a really long time. When it finished, it took forever for me to see even my wallpaper. Every movement made the spinning wheel appear and lag everything again.
I contacted Apple support and they were quite useless to be honest, also irritating. After I specifically told them problems appeared after installing the security update, I was asked if my mac had gotten wet or received any physical damage. Then, they made me run diagnostics, first aid, create a new user, until they gave up and asked me to update to Catalina, which I cannot do because I wouldn't be able to run some apps anymore.
After reading this post, I tried restoring a snapshot from recovery and it worked!! I'm so happy
 
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I too spent yesterday waiting for things to start after this update. Glad I found this thread and thank you for the contributions, never good to think you are alone.

One thought I had was the possibility that this problem was SIP related. My mac is a late 2014 mini, which has been updated to Mojave but not beyond. I use crontab for various tasks and was having annoying problems with SIP getting in the way so actually disabled SIP around the time I went to mojave. I wondered if , while a supported option, this had somehow broken this release, which is why we seem to be few shouting ? Anyone else here disabled SIP ?
2012 mac mini with SIP disabled to use cDock. After the security update and restart, the desktop picture would flash on and off and the dock reverted to the original Mojave dock. Restarting cDock 3 only made it worse as a computer restart left the dock only showing Finder and Trash, no applications. I removed cDock with AppCleaner and trashed the dock preferences and restarted. So far good as the flashing stopped. I still had to reinstall the apps to the dock. Guess I'll try reenabling SIP and see what that does as I won't be using cDock.
 
I highly doubt it's SIP's fault, as I have had it on all throughout this mess.

Maybe I'll disable it and see what happens..

At the very least, doing the reinstall from the Recovery partition (which downloads the last build before security updates in most cases) seems to do the trick of restoring RAM, but then you're back at Safari 12.1.2.
 
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Exactly the same thing happened to me.

Security Update 2020-005 installed very slowly and I went to bed instead of waiting for shutdown.
After SU 2020-005 everything runs glacially, almost unusably slowly.

Computer
iMac 21.5-inch late 2013
Memory: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
Disk: 1TB SATA (original 5400rpm)

System Report > Software > Installations
2020-04-14 Mojave 10.14.6
2020-04-15 Security Update 2020-002
2020-05-31 Security Update 2020-003
2020-07-16 Security Update 2020-004
2020-09-24 Safari 14.0
2020-09-24 Security Update 2020-005

Activity Monitor Memory (GB) - after boot, after light use
Used 7.05 (Apps 5.39 Wired 0.96 Compressed 0.77) Cached files 0.91 Swap 0
Used 5.65 (Apps 3.10 Wired 1.27 Compressed 1.30) Cached files 1.51 Swap 0

I made a chance interesting observation:
Contacts archive *.abbu size (minimal changes made between these dates)
2020-07-19 (soon after SU 2020-004) 7.5MB
2020-09-26 (soon after SU 2020-005) 31.7MB
Something is seriously wrong here.

I am writing this on a MacBook Pro 13-inch mid 2012 4GB with Mojave SU 2020-002.
It works fine.

I plan to re-install Mojave and apply up to SU 2020-003.

I registered for this forum specifically to report this. I have never seen such a mess from Apple in 20 years.
 
There are a couple of people at the end of the following thread that are suggesting running OnyX solves the high memory usage on their Macs, has anyone running the 2020-005 update tried this yet?


Since I have never used OnyX before I am waiting on some advise on what settings they used to remedy the issue.
 
2012 mac mini with SIP disabled to use cDock. After the security update and restart, the desktop picture would flash on and off and the dock reverted to the original Mojave dock. Restarting cDock 3 only made it worse as a computer restart left the dock only showing Finder and Trash, no applications. I removed cDock with AppCleaner and trashed the dock preferences and restarted. So far good as the flashing stopped. I still had to reinstall the apps to the dock. Guess I'll try reenabling SIP and see what that does as I won't be using cDock.
Recipe to get cDock working again (I had to do it last week):
- Reinstall 10.14.6 on top;
- Reinstall all Security, Supplemental and Safari updates following the order they were published. Not sure if Safari updates play a role in this bug but I did it anyway.

It worked for me, I stopped at 2020-004. Cloning my CCC backup or TM restore didn’t worked, cDock was flashing and unusable (crash).
 
There are a couple of people at the end of the following thread that are suggesting running OnyX solves the high memory usage on their Macs, has anyone running the 2020-005 update tried this yet?


Since I have never used OnyX before I am waiting on some advise on what settings they used to remedy the issue.

Last post has a screenshot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...04.2246032/page-3?post=28954422#post-28954422
 
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2019 21.5" iMac. Installed the SU last night...and frustration rained down on me. Slower than a pig in molasses...hauling an elephant on its back. Am in the process of re-installing Mojave via Recovery mode.

Been using Macs for almost 30 years now, and have so many excellent compliments for the company. I mean, some really stellar customer service. So I guess I'm spoiled...because this situation really pisses me off. Looking forward to having them rectify things.

P.S. Any advice on whether or not to upgrade to Catalina? I'm using it on my other iMac, and there don't seem to be any issues with it.
 
Yeah, that's me asking if those are the appropriate settings that fixed their issues. ;)

Again, I am interested if anyone with the current update has tried this. I will be running OnyX as I head out the door for the bi-weekly errands, so I'll report back on how it goes.
Take a look in « Options » to be sure but I think it should be good. Make a backup first.
 
Take a look in « Options » to be sure but I think it should be good. Make a backup first.
1. I too was having crashes with cDock version 3.1.2 - so I tried the latest version, v4.1.5.
Same story, crashes on start up and it takes a lot of tinkering to even get the Dock showing up. In the end, cDock doesn't show any of the themed docks, or any other tweaks. Total waste of money.
Did you get it working and how?
2. Activity Monitor was showing 12GB of RAM (24GB installed in my iMac late 2012) used after the Security Update 005 was installed, now down to 7GB after running Onyx, with the options set to delete all the system, applications, and Font caches, basically everything except the Spotlight index. Starting up with the Shift key held down may be a viable alternative.
 
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