Level 2

190 points

Why am I always running out of RAM?

For a pair of weeks now I have been doing all I am capable to understand the problem I have been experiencing. The language and terminology if my issue is somewhat foreign to me, but here is my best explanation.

On my Mac Pro 8-core 2.8 GHz tower with 8 GB of RAM I am finding myself running very few operations but end up in a situation where I can visibly see my performance bogging down as if I am out of RAM.

So I have been running activity monitor and what I am seeing is 40 MB of "Free" RAM with 630 MB "Wired", 2.5 GB "Inactive" and about 5 GB of "Active".

I understand some of the basics of what these terms mean. Here is one thing I am 100% certain: after a reboot I start with a massive majority of "Free" or "Green Colored Pie Section" of RAM and when this is happening, my performance is fantastic. Whenever I have a few GB's of RAM, I never complain about my performance.

Here is something I am almost 100% certain of: when my performance is poor or lacking, I notice two things that I find alarming: 1) I have under 100MB of "Free" RAM and 2) 50-60% of the RAM pie is colored yellow indicating "Active".

I am using very common applications and even when I quit all of my applications (except activity monitor) the active RAM is still dominating my 'pie'.

That's the best I can do for now, any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 28, 2009 3:44 PM

23 replies

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 28, 2009 4:47 PM in response to JeffKasper

JeffKasper wrote:
. . .
Here's a phrase that I want to say about my problem: "My active memory size is getting out of control and isn't purging unneeded information often enough"

If that's really true, it's an indication (not a sure thing) of an app or process with a memory leak.

JeffKasper Author

Level 2

190 points

Oct 28, 2009 4:51 PM in response to Pondini

reading on mds process- looks like spotlight issue? and now I look up at the spotlight icon and it is blinking in and out indexing the computer ??

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 28, 2009 4:53 PM in response to JeffKasper

JeffKasper wrote:
now i just found something.

Indeed, I was not in "All Processes".

I see a process called "mds" by the root user taking up 3.4 GB of Real Memory and 3.6 GB of VM

I'm scared now

No, don't panic. mds (MetaData Server) is used mostly by Spotlight, but also by various other apps and processes. You may also see the related mdworker and/or *mdhelper as well. mds runs at all times, but if you're not seeing any swapping, it likely isn't really using all that 3.4 gb. Most of it is probably in the Inactive pool.

Remember, short of a memory leak, if OSX isn't swapping, you have enough memory. All that memory that mds used in the past is available to any app that needs it. Most of that 3.4 gb is probably pages and pages of files it has indexed since your last restart.

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Oct 28, 2009 4:54 PM in response to JeffKasper

JeffKasper wrote:
now i just found something.

Indeed, I was not in "All Processes".

I see a process called "mds" by the root user taking up 3.4 GB of Real Memory and 3.6 GB of VM

that's a LOT for mds and seems to be the biggest culprit. do you have any antivirus programs? also, do you have any external drives connected? disconnect those and temporarily turn off spotlight on all internal drives. to do that add all internal drives to spotlight's privacy pane. mds is responsible for spotlight indexing among other things. see if that makes any difference. but do test your RAM regardless of anything else you do.

I'm scared now

JeffKasper Author

Level 2

190 points

Oct 28, 2009 4:54 PM in response to Pondini

spotlight seems to be endlessly indexing without an estimated time of completion. can i uncheck everything in system prefs so that spotlight will quit indexing ?

JeffKasper Author

Level 2

190 points

Oct 28, 2009 5:02 PM in response to JeffKasper

i unchecked everything in search results in the spotlight tab and did a reboot.

in the upper right hand corner, i can see spotlight is still trying to index

JeffKasper Author

Level 2

190 points

Oct 28, 2009 5:15 PM in response to V.K.

I have moved all internal and external hard drives into the privacy section of spotlight in system preferences, I think these problems are over.

Thank you all

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Oct 28, 2009 5:26 PM in response to JeffKasper

JeffKasper wrote:
I have moved all internal and external hard drives into the privacy section of spotlight in system preferences, I think these problems are over.

Thank you all

wait. this just means that spotlight was choking on something and couldn't finish indexing your drive. right now you just turned off spotlight indexing on everything. this may have resolved your RAM issues but now you can't use spotlight. I would try to figure out what it was choking on. remove the drive from spotlight's privacy pane and let it start indexing. then open Console.app and watch for any error messages by mdworker or mds. they might say what's causing the problem then you can either delete the offending file or exclude just the folder containing it from indexing instead of excluding the whole drive.

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Why am I always running out of RAM?