[FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) - I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic... I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks. Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)... I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort logic board failure. I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor). Anyway... back on topic. The 15 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled Inactive, though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant Inactive memory available at all times... I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming Inactive Memory just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?). One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)? Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?). - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
Steve, I think your experience is in line with mine. My mid-2012 retina MBP (with an obscene 16GB of RAM) occasionally gets in a nearly zero free memory state. My only really big RAM user is VMWare Fusion running Windows 7 (I usually only give it 2GB of RAM, and it runs fine). By the time it gets in this state, there is usually about 4GB of inactive memory shown in the Activity Monitor. Doing a command line purge returns most of that. A full reboot, followed by opening all the same apps and docs shows much less memory used than before the reboot. I'm getting to be less of a fanboi for Apple than ever. Gary On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:27 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) - I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic... I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks. Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)... I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort logic board failure. I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor). Anyway... back on topic. The 15 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled Inactive, though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant Inactive memory available at all times... I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming Inactive Memory just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?). One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)? Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?). - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
O n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention. Since then, no. But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better. Before SSD, I had to run purge in a terminal to get the memory back. I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD. Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better. Maybe Mountain Lion did so? -- Owen On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) - I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic... I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that **all** my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks. Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)... I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort logic board failure. I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor). Anyway... back on topic. The 15 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled Inactive, though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant Inactive memory available at all times... I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming Inactive Memory just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?). One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)? Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?). - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
Forgot to mention that I'm on Mountain Lion, so no, it doesn't do any better :-( ;; Gary On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:45 PM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net wrote: On my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention. Since then, no. But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better. Before SSD, I had to run purge in a terminal to get the memory back. I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD. Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better. Maybe Mountain Lion did so? -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
Gary/Owen - Thanks for the quick response from both of you. I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby. I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the problem of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity. I don't see it doing it, even though it must be. Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory. Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!). I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user? I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines. I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space? Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available? I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the golden days of UNIX are still relevant! - Steve O n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention. Since then, no. But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better. Before SSD, I had to run purge in a terminal to get the memory back. I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD. Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better. Maybe Mountain Lion did so? -- Owen On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com mailto:sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) - I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic... I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that **all** my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks. Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)... I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort logic board failure. I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor). Anyway... back on topic. The 15 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled Inactive, though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant Inactive memory available at all times... I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming Inactive Memory just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?). One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Owen - Thanks for the quick response from both of you. I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby. I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the problem of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity. I don't see it doing it, even though it must be. Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory. Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!). I still get spinning whatchamcallits, even with Apple's own apps (especially iTunes - I have my music library on my Time Capsule, served over the wireless network, so it's primarily the first time after not having that volume mounted for a while). Same goes for Mail.app - spinning wheels at times. Spinning wheels are more frequent as free memory gets lower, but even with lots free, still some spinning. I must say that despite not really being a fan of Microsoft, Windows 7 does perform very well (even in a 2GB VM). If I had it to do over (or next time), I would look into a laptop with Linux as the installed OS, and running Windows under VMWare or VirtualBox. I mainly went with another MacBook Pro in case I want to do iOS development, and to stay in Apple's good graces, a Hackintosh doesn't cut it. ;; Gary I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user? I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines. I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space? Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available? I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the golden days of UNIX are still relevant! - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
Gary - Spinning Watzits... yes, I presume (but don't know) what all that is about is anytime the Window Manager thinks some threshold for User Interaction has been exceeded it throws up a hypnotic spinning wheel (in place of the old tumbling hourglass?) to at least acknowledge that they know they are keeping you waiting. So I am used to getting those while my cursor is in-focus on a GUI app that I *know* just asked to do something hard (like you describe with iPhoto). The symptom I was getting with my old system (which hasn't returned quite yet) is spinning Watzits just from changing input focus from one app to another and/or doing the simplest of things inside of any given app (trying to highlight and delete a section of text in Thunderbird). I *did* just do a little superficial research and found a *little* superficial information on OSX's VM and was reminded that OSX's version of what I know as vmstat is vm_stat. http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/08/mac-virtual-memory-swap/ Their hint about the ratio of swap-in vs swap-out was promising. Also, on my last system I was running on about 1-10 GB of free disk space most of the time. I don't know how VM Swap Space is allocated, but it might have been cut way down because of my limited free space (or it might have been holding huge amounts on principle in case it needed it?). Amazing what happens when we start treating our tools as appliances? If you can't field strip it blindfolded in a ditch, you don't own it might be a good motto, even for computer jocks (jerks). I have a copy of W7 to put on my PBpro and am sorting out how to manage that now... Fusion, Parallels, WINE, BootCamp? Sounds like you are happy with Fusion? - Steve On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Owen - Thanks for the quick response from both of you. I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby. I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the problem of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity. I don't see it doing it, even though it must be. Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory. Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!). I still get spinning whatchamcallits, even with Apple's own apps (especially iTunes - I have my music library on my Time Capsule, served over the wireless network, so it's primarily the first time after not having that volume mounted for a while). Same goes for Mail.app - spinning wheels at times. Spinning wheels are more frequent as free memory gets lower, but even with lots free, still some spinning. I must say that despite not really being a fan of Microsoft, Windows 7 does perform very well (even in a 2GB VM). If I had it to do over (or next time), I would look into a laptop with Linux as the installed OS, and running Windows under VMWare or VirtualBox. I mainly went with another MacBook Pro in case I want to do iOS development, and to stay in Apple's good graces, a Hackintosh doesn't cut it. ;; Gary I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user? I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines. I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space? Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available? I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the golden days of UNIX are still relevant! - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
On Jul 5, 2013, at 4:26 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: I have a copy of W7 to put on my PBpro and am sorting out how to manage that now... Fusion, Parallels, WINE, BootCamp? Sounds like you are happy with Fusion? I've been happy with Fusion since v2 (I'm at 5 now, and have paid for the upgrades). I got Parallels free with the laptop, and tried it for a while, but I was so used to Fusion's UI that I stayed with it anyway. I tried VirtualBox for a while just because I like open source on principle, but it certainly isn't as polished as Fusion (or Parallels). ;; Gary FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only
One thing that is easy to forget is that most modern OS use any free RAM for disk cache (aka buffers), so you will always look like you're using 100% RAM. What's really important is to look for processes in the D state under top, (which are doing I/O) and also the amount of swap actually being used. But something has really gone awry on modern GUIs - my wife swears at (not by) the KDE interface running on my Linux box when things slow to a crawl (usually when I'm doing something slightly I/O intensive), whereas my trusty (and perhaps krusty) old fvwm is as lithe and responsive as ever. I used a Windows 7 machine at a previous client's with 4GB of memory and quad core. The machine would always slow to a crawl if I had Visual Studio, Firefox and Eclipse all open at the same time (and of course Cygwin), and even without eclipse running, I would need to restart Visual Studio and Firefox on the order of once a day to reclaim leaked memory. I got good at selectively killing processes so that I didn't need to do a full reboot every time. The CPU might be quad core, but never saw the load average go much above about 1.5, even with multiple parallel C++ compiles happening - the machine was far too I/O dominated. Something is wrong with Virtual Memory handling in modern UIs - it doesn't seem to matter which OS you're using. It's one good reaon keeping me using Linux, because I have the choice to use a minimal window manager that gets out of the way and lets you use the machine. Cheers On Fri, Jul 05, 2013 at 02:45:53PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote: O n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention. Since then, no. But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better. Before SSD, I had to run purge in a terminal to get the memory back. I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD. Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better. Maybe Mountain Lion did so? -- Owen On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) - I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic... I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that **all** my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks. Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)... I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort logic board failure. I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor). Anyway... back on topic. The 15 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled Inactive, though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant Inactive memory available at all times... I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming Inactive Memory just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?). One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)? Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of
