Worrysome Page Ins/Outs

[termina3]

Hey guys,

I have 222100ins and 245691outs–not a big deal with only 2gigs of RAM. Unless, of course, the only programs I opened were Aperture, Firefox, iTunes, Dashboard, and the Activity Monitor.

I assume it'll all go back to normal when I restart again–so my main question is why?

I'll post back if it happens again upon restart. Thanks!

 

[mkrishnan]

Pageins don't matter... but as for the page outs, what were you doing in Aperture?

 

[mad jew]

Also, the absolute figures don't matter so much as the rate at which they accumulate. How long since your last restart?

 

[termina3]

Last evening (about 24hrs ago).

Computer is at home though, so it's not like it's gone through a full workday.
I processed about 6 previews in Ap., and looked through several albums (sorting through type deal, changed some ratings). Some cropping, but nothing intensive.

-T

 

[diamond3]

Pageins don't matter... but as for the page outs, what were you doing in Aperture?

Well, pageins are still important because you can compare the ratio to page outs. But, nevertheless, just have your activity monitor open while you do your normal work. Keep an eye on when the page outs occur. Really there is nothing else you can do but add more ram. Also, check the cpu tab and view all active processes and make sure there isn't anything strange running and using up a lot of the cpu or memory.

 

[tyr2]

Aperture and iTunes both eat RAM. Not much you can do about Aperture but using the old style 'plain' view in iTunes rather than CoverFlow makes a big difference if you have a large library.

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

Don't worry about it, when I had 3GB of RAM pageouts were very excessive. At the moment with 5GB, it's still 1:1 - only because of the 2 days uptime and dozens of apps open. You have two options, add a little RAM, or stop worrying

 

[mad jew]

Last evening (about 24hrs ago).

Christ! That's quite a quick growth. Is your machine acting sluggishly?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Third option : Cut way back on the installed Dashboard Widgets, don't run P2P or distributed computing apps in the background, disable Adobe Version Cue and other 'helpers' as much as you can, close iTunes and iPhoto and other applications when not actively using them. With 5 Gb RAM, you have to be beating your machine silly, GW, to have a 1:1 ratio

 

[dkoralek]

Third option : Cut way back on the installed Dashboard Widgets, don't run P2P or distributed computing apps in the background, disable Adobe Version Cue and other 'helpers' as much as you can, close iTunes and iPhoto and other applications when not actively using them. With 5 Gb RAM, you have to be beating your machine silly, GW, to have a 1:1 ratio

Along those lines, is there a way of "forcing" os x to release RAM once an app has closed (i.e. sometimes an app will allocate a bunch of ram, you shut down the app, but some of that ram is still allocated as inactive, and you go to run another app and get some page outs because of it)?

cheers.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Along those lines, is there a way of "forcing" os x to release RAM once an app has closed (i.e. sometimes an app will allocate a bunch of ram, you shut down the app, but some of that ram is still allocated as inactive, and you go to run another app and get some page outs because of it)?

Inactive = available
You don't have to do anything, OSX will automatically assign the RAM to the next program that asks. Don't worry about the difference between Inactive and Free.

There is one poster here who has reported problems with Parallels being able to occupy Inactive memory, however I think that is an isolated issue -- there hasn't yet been any other confirmation of the problem.

 

[dkoralek]

Inactive = available
You don't have to do anything, OSX will automatically assign the RAM to the next program that asks. Don't worry about the difference between Inactive and Free.

There is one poster here who has reported problems with Parallels being able to occupy Inactive memory, however I think that is an isolated issue -- there hasn't yet been any other confirmation of the problem.

And that would be where I think I have seen the problem. i'll have very little "free" ram, but a ton of inactive ram and run parallels to run some quick stuff on sas and then the page outs creep up.

of course, i could just stop cheaping out and buy some more RAM

cheers.

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

Third option : Cut way back on the installed Dashboard Widgets, don't run P2P or distributed computing apps in the background, disable Adobe Version Cue and other 'helpers' as much as you can, close iTunes and iPhoto and other applications when not actively using them. With 5 Gb RAM, you have to be beating your machine silly, GW, to have a 1:1 ratio

Not really, haven't been doing all that much, just one pro app alongside the "general" bunch - Aperture. Page outs skyrocketed when exporting a batch of 200 images.

 

[termina3]

Christ! That's quite a quick growth. Is your machine acting sluggishly?

Yes. Very much so.

Restart seemed to fix it, however my ratio is still hovering between a 1.5/1 and 1/1.

 

[cube]

It's useless to look at the totals. You have to use 'top' in Terminal for the instantaneous stats.

 

[CanadaRAM]

And that would be where I think I have seen the problem. i'll have very little "free" ram, but a ton of inactive ram and run parallels to run some quick stuff on sas and then the page outs creep up.

Pageouts aren't really related to whether RAM is inactive or free -- they are a function of whether the applications in use are calling for more RAM than is available physically.

Inactive vs Free would only be a problem for you if an application refused to open because it could not have access to Inactive RAM --- which is theoretically not suppposed to happen, ever, and is the point of interest with this one poster and their Parallels.

Aperture. Page outs skyrocketed when exporting a batch of 200 images.

Well, yeah. Big files, professional application, batch processing 100's at a time, that'd do it.

 

[dkoralek]

Pageouts aren't really related to whether RAM is inactive or free -- they are a function of whether the applications in use are calling for more RAM than is available physically.

Inactive vs Free would only be a problem for you if an application refused to open because it could not have access to Inactive RAM --- which is theoretically not suppposed to happen, ever, and is the point of interest with this one poster and their Parallels.

I think that I understand what's going on. What happens is Parallels runs fine, but it wont' access any of the RAM that is listed as inactive. Instead, it first uses the RAM listed as free. So, an example would be that I was running a bunch of stuff, used up more than 3 of my 4 gig, quit those programs and a bunch of RAM is still listed as active or inctive (but not free). Start Parallels up, allocating 1 gig (and say there is about 1.5 gig that is active and another 2 gig that is listed as "inactive"). Parallels takes up the free RAM and then you start seeing page outs even though it should be taking up the inactive RAM (or at least that's what I would assume it should be doing).

cheers.


cheers.