Mac Mini 2011 with 2gb ram. So yes I can upgrade it, I just don't have much in 
the way of income at the moment. Long story short, I should be paid sometime 
soon, and I'd love to use some of the money on more ram. Part of the problem is 
that I don't know what ram to get; I looked on Newegg.com, but all the 
mac-compatible ram specified iMac/Macbook, nothing about the Mini.
On Jan 18, 2013, at 11:16 AM, Chris Blouch <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yup, with memory that low your probably thrashing memory in and out of your 
> hard drive, which is magnitudes slower than ream RAM. What kind of machine do 
> you have? Can you upgrade the RAM?
> 
> CB
> 
> On 1/18/13 10:52 AM, Alex Hall wrote:
>> Thanks. I had already looked at top's man page, but navigating it seemed 
>> tricky and buggy with vo. Either way, I'll have to keep that command you 
>> suggested in a bash script somewhere easily accessible. I know I'm swapping 
>> out information all the time, as my hard drive is working more often than 
>> not and my free memory is very low (right now it's between 16 and 17mb - 
>> yes, megabytes).
>> On Jan 18, 2013, at 10:43 AM, Chris Blouch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Ahh, that's right. You were more concerned with RAM than CPU. If you're low 
>>> on RAM then the system will start swapping memory onto and off of your hard 
>>> drive which can bring everything to a crawl. Anyway, I first discovered 
>>> that running top only one time seems to always give 0% for CPU so I changed 
>>> to do a couple samples. I guess the first try must be buggy:
>>> 
>>> top -ncols 3 -l5 -n5
>>> 
>>> This now runs top 5 times and I just review the last run. Back to the 
>>> memory usage, it gets complicated because there is all this real and 
>>> virtual memory stuff, plus a single process's memory chunks could be 
>>> scattered all over so it takes top a bit of work to total things up, 
>>> sometimes making top the highest CPU user on an otherwise idle system. 
>>> Anyway, if you navigate up past the PID COMMAND %CPU row you'll come across 
>>> a line like this:
>>> 
>>> PhysMem: 776M wired, 2138M active, 616M inactive, 3531M used, 435M free.
>>> 
>>> The wired+active numbers are usually what's reported as memory in use while 
>>> the free+inactive numbers are considered available. So on my 4GB laptop I 
>>> have about 3GB used and 1GB free, which is pretty healthy. I'd check that 
>>> on yours. If you're pushing 10% free or less you're probably swapping. So 
>>> you could do something like this:
>>> 
>>> top -n5 -l3 -stats cpu,command,rsize,vsize -o rsize
>>> 
>>> This displays the top 5 processes by resident memory size. For me it was 
>>> something like this:
>>> 
>>> %CPU COMMAND     RSIZE VSIZE
>>> 7.7  kernel_task 401M  5066M
>>> 0.0  mds         217M  4300M
>>> 0.0  Safari      175M  3808M
>>> 0.0  WebProcess  125M  3636M
>>> 0.0  Finder      111M  3771M
>>> 
>>> You can find out more about any terminal command, like top, by typing 'man' 
>>> followed by the command. So 'man top' will give you more details about all 
>>> the parameters than you'll want to know.
>>> 
>>> CB
>>> 
>>> On 1/18/13 10:14 AM, Alex Hall wrote:
>>>> That's a useful command, thanks. I can't seem to get the top processes 
>>>> though, at least not according to processor load or ram usage. The five it 
>>>> showed me were using 0% CPU and I know they don't take up much ram at 
>>>> all...
>>>> On Jan 18, 2013, at 9:54 AM, Chris Blouch <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I couldn't seem to get the columns to sort either but you could always 
>>>>> use 'top' from the terminal. Just type (or copy paste) the command like 
>>>>> this:
>>>>> 
>>>>> top -ncols 3 -l1 -n5
>>>>> 
>>>>> ncols tells it to only give the first three columns which is the 
>>>>> processID, process name and %CPU. The l1 means to sample just once. You 
>>>>> can change the number to do it over and over if you want. The n5 means to 
>>>>> show just the top 5 processes. If you want the top 10 just change the 5 
>>>>> to 10.
>>>>> 
>>>>> CB
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 1/18/13 2:58 AM, Ricardo Walker wrote:
>>>>>> How odd,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> You would think that sorting command would work in such a table.  But on 
>>>>>> my machine too, it doesn't seem to work.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Ricardo Walker
>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>> Twitter:@apple2thecore
>>>>>> www.appletothecore.info
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jan 17, 2013, at 10:53 PM, Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I know I have low ram, but the question stands: can you sort process 
>>>>>>> lists by CPU usage or ram? I tried the vo-shift-backslash command and 
>>>>>>> was taken to the headers list, but activating the buttons there did not 
>>>>>>> seem to do anything at all. Is there any way to do this?
>>>>>>> On Jan 17, 2013, at 10:48 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I had a similar problem with my macbook when I installed mountain 
>>>>>>>> lion. I upgraded to 4 gigabytes of ram and that took care of the 
>>>>>>>> problem. I rarely ever get the "busy" notice, and when I do, it lasts 
>>>>>>>> for a brief time and then everything works fine.
>>>>>>>> On Jan 17, 2013, at 7:36 PM, Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>> Every time I start my mac (2011 Mini with 2gb ram and 10.8), it is 
>>>>>>>>> sluggish for at least ten to fifteen minutes. Eventually things calm 
>>>>>>>>> down, provided I stay within three or four apps, but for those first 
>>>>>>>>> minutes everything is slow and busy more often than not. Is there a 
>>>>>>>>> way I can use Activity Monitor to see which apps and/or processes are 
>>>>>>>>> taking up the mac's resources, such as CPU time or ram? Thanks.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Have a great day,
>>>>>>>>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
>>>>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
>>>>>>>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group.
>>>>>>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>>>>>>>>> [email protected].
>>>>>>>>> For more options, visit this group at 
>>>>>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
>>>>>>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group.
>>>>>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>>>>>>>> [email protected].
>>>>>>>> For more options, visit this group at 
>>>>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Have a great day,
>>>>>>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
>>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
>>>>>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group.
>>>>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>>>>>>> [email protected].
>>>>>>> For more options, visit this group at 
>>>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
>>>>> "MacVisionaries" group.
>>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>>>>> [email protected].
>>>>> For more options, visit this group at 
>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Have a great day,
>>>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
>>>> [email protected]
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
>>> "MacVisionaries" group.
>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>>> [email protected].
>>> For more options, visit this group at 
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Have a great day,
>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
>> [email protected]
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "MacVisionaries" group.
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
> [email protected].
> For more options, visit this group at 
> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
> 



Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini)
[email protected]



-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.

Reply via email to