Where's my RAM going?

[gauchogolfer]

Hi everybody.

So, I've been experiencing much more RAM usage/consumption than I think is normal for me, and I'm not really sure why. I've attached my Activity Monitor screenshot; is it normal to have kernel_task using so much memory? Also, my virtual memory is pretty high. I'm not using too many apps: Safari, Mail, iCal, Adium, iTunes, and Activity Monitor. Yet still, my pageouts are very high.

In fact, how is it possible to have my pageouts be higher than pageins? This seems odd to me, unless I don't really understand their function. Thanks for the help, and if you have any ideas of things to check/tweak/erase.

System: 1.67GHz Powerbook, 10.4.8, uptime= 3 days

Edit: Just thought of something, I've got folding@home installed, but only to run in terminal (console mode). I've deleted it since I no longer use it. Could it be doing something this significant?

 

[EricNau]

Kernel_Task is not your problem... It's Safari. I'd say Safari should be using around 75 MB, but for you it's using nearly 400 MB.

Sometimes Safari will just get a little carried away, have you tried restarting?

If that doesn't work, do you have any hacks installed, or by chance have 100 tabs open?

 

[gauchogolfer]

Kernel_Task is not your problem... It's Safari. I'd say Safari should be using around 75 MB, but for you it's using nearly 400 MB.

Sometimes Safari will just get a little carried away, have you tried restarting?

If that doesn't work, do you have any hacks installed, or by chance have 100 tabs open?

Hi, thanks for the response. For Safari, I've only got 3 tabs open, and it's been running basically nonstop for 3 days. I do notice that it ramps up in RAM usage, and occasionally restart it to make it go back down in size. However, it quickly ramps up again.

I'm using UNO as a theme, and I use Inquisitor in Safari. I think that those are the only modifications pertaining to Safari that I've got going.

Edit:So, I just restarted Safari and it's at 77.6 megs with 3 tabs open after 2 minutes of running. I'll let it go overnight and see how much it has bloated in that time.

Any other ideas/culprits for me to look at? How about iTunes using 109MB, not playing anything, just sitting there? Again, it's been open for a couple of days.

 

[abrooks]

Looking at the activity there it seems to me that the computer has just been on for a long time and things are beginning to get a little messy.

But on another note I'd hazard a guess that you don't have enough RAM for what you want to do. You have a very large number of page ins and a relatively high number of pages outs, not to mention your VM size is huge.

But like I say I think the problem is the amount of time things have been running for, almost half your RAM is showing as Inactive, but is obviously not freeing itself up.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Hi, thanks for the response. For Safari, I've only got 3 tabs open, and it's been running basically nonstop for 3 days. I do notice that it ramps up in RAM usage, and occasionally restart it to make it go back down in size. However, it quickly ramps up again.

I'm using UNO as a theme, and I use Inquisitor in Safari. I think that those are the only modifications pertaining to Safari that I've got going.

Edit:So, I just restarted Safari and it's at 77.6 megs with 3 tabs open after 2 minutes of running. I'll let it go overnight and see how much it has bloated in that time.

Any other ideas/culprits for me to look at? How about iTunes using 109MB, not playing anything, just sitting there? Again, it's been open for a couple of days.

Apparently, you're not the only one experiencing this issue. I am too... and so are many other Safari, OmniWeb, Shiira, and other WebKit/WebCore-based browser users. The only fix is to restart Safari, and it'll just come back again.

 

[gauchogolfer]

Looking at the activity there it seems to me that the computer has just been on for a long time and things are beginning to get a little messy.

Apparently, you're not the only one experiencing this issue. I am too... and so are many other Safari, OmniWeb, Shiira, and other WebKit/WebCore-based browser users. The only fix is to restart Safari, and it'll just come back again.

Thanks for the replies. After leaving it overnight, Safari is back up to 103MB, having added basically 30MB while I was asleep. I guess I'll just get used to cycling Safari more often. I don't think that having it on for 3 days qualifies as a 'long time' since typically I reboot about 1/month.

Here's hoping for an update which reduces Safari's memory drain.