var/vm/sleepimage taking up huge disc space

[deepakvrao]

Running 10.7.5 on a 2011 MBA 13 with the 128gb SSD.

I sometimes get a running out of disc warning, and Omnidiscsweeper shows upto 15-20gb in var/vm/sleepimage.

Did a bit of searching and found that a lot of this space is released by restarting. Restarted now and found 15gb released, but still 4gb is taken by sleepimage.

I thought that Macs NEVER need to be restarted? Anything wrong that I am doing?

 

[ct2k7]

I thought that Macs NEVER need to be restarted?

How wrong you are.

That file is the hibernation file when your mac goes to sleep.

 

[deepakvrao]

How wrong you are.

That file is the hibernation file when your mac goes to sleep.

I gather that, but I seriously have seen guys saying that they have not restarted in months?

 

[MisterMe]

I gather that, but I seriously have seen guys saying that they have not restarted in months?

You are confusing two completely different situations. A user may logout of an active account but leave the computer running for years. The computer may go to sleep without logging out of an active account after a predetermined period of inactivity.

The size of your sleepimage file is determined by the real and virtual memory required at the time your computer goes to sleep. This requirement is dictated by the number of your active applications and the size of the files that you have open.

 

[benwiggy]

I thought that Macs NEVER need to be restarted?

If something isn't quite working as it should, then a restart is one of the first things to try.
While there's no need to turn it off, unless you're running some mission-critical server, there's no need to leave it on either. Most of the posts bragging about uptime (and complaining that a system update forces a restart and zeros their count) are just "measuring contests".

Personally, I turn my desktop Macs off every night. If I'm not going to use my laptop for a while, then I'll turn that off too. A restart can clear out some digital cobwebs, restore any memory problems and refresh any data held in RAM that may have gone a bit wonky.

 

[deepakvrao]

Thanks guys. Will get into that habit. Should not be difficult - used to do that with Windows all the time, and we have only a year ago switched to Macs.

 

[0111587]

Sleep image is equal to the computer ram size, more ram = bigger sleep image.