Your system has run out of application memory / no swap file

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Level 1

9 points

Your system has run out of application memory / no swap file

Ever since I upgraded my OS boot drive to an SSD running via external USB3 I'm constantly getting "Your system has run out of application memory" errors. This is a late 2012 iMac with 16 GB ram running the latest os with over a TB of free disk space. I noticed that the "Swap Used" under Memory in the Activity Monitor is 0 bytes. I tried the "sudo diskutil mount -mountPoint /private/var/vm disk2s4" (put in my correct external SSD disk number) found here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8202632 but it had no effect.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Posted on Aug 1, 2019 9:24 PM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

68,432 points

Aug 3, 2019 12:15 PM in response to scottjn

If the issue only occurs when booting an external drive, are you able to mount the internal drive to see if macOS will use it for the swap?

It is also possible if your main boot drive is external that your computer is not getting system firmware updates installed. I know the macOS installer requires a valid internal drive volume so the macOS installer can update the system firmware. It would not surprise me if macOS also has the same requirement. Unfortunately Apple no longer lists current system firmware versions for their products for us to check.

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Answer 2

chris_g1

Community Specialist

Aug 2, 2019 12:22 PM in response to scottjn

Hello scottjn and thanks for being a part of Apple Support Communities.

I see you are having some issues with application memory when running your iMac from an external drive.

I also see you are familiar with Activity Monitor. Have you checked there to see what process(s) is/are actually consuming memory resources and tried force quitting them?

Also, does any of this change after safe booting the Mac?

Best regards.

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Answer 3

scottjn Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 3, 2019 12:27 PM in response to HWTech

Hi - thanks. That's correct, the issue only occurs when booting from the external drive. The internal drive is mounted even when I boot from the external drive but it won't use that drive as a swap drive either. I tried forcing it with the above terminal command but it didn't work. Not sure about the firmware, I have everything updated to the latest that Apple recommends.

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Answer 4

scottjn Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 3, 2019 10:43 AM in response to chris_g1

Hi Chris - thanks for your response. There is nothing unusual using memory in the memory tab, WindowServer is at 1.32 GB, Mail is at 708 MB and everything else is at < 400 MB. Of course, if I quit everything I no longer get the application memory issue but the real problem is that virtual memory and the Swap file are not being used. When I boot from the internal drive everything is fine: I don't get memory errors and I see the Swap file being used. There appears to be some OS bug that doesn't allow the swap file to be used on externally booted drives. Thanks.

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Your system has run out of application memory / no swap file

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