Lion - Memory Usage Problems

I know in the earlier case you said no solution is needed as he was not running out of memory, but this is shocking for me. I just upgraded my ram from 4GB to 16GB for my 2011 iMac. Quicktime and Safari were the only apps running on the mac and I was left with 40 MB !!!!!! This was just after I shelled in some money upgrading my memory. I immediately closed Quicktime and Safari and shut down all the running apps. The used RAM was still around 15GB. So I went ahead shutdown the Mac and restarted. Then the Mac started out with 15 GB of free RAM.

I hope not to keep restarting everytime for up my Ram. There must be some solution to this frustrating issue. Also why is the inactive memory 13.62 GB !!!!!!!

- Krishh

You said:

Krishh wrote:

I know in the earlier case you said no solution is needed as he was not running out of memory, but this is shocking for me. I just upgraded my ram from 4GB to 16GB for my 2011 iMac. Quicktime and Safari were the only apps running on the mac and I was left with 40 MB !!!!!! This was just after I shelled in some money upgrading my memory. I immediately closed Quicktime and Safari and shut down all the running apps.

First, let's clarify: one of your sentences said "only QuickTime and Safari". Another sentence said "closed QuickTime and Safari and shutdown all running apps". So which is it? What other apps did you have running?

More importantly, what were you doing with QuickTime and Safari?

What you saw is nothing to worry about. Your computer is making use of all the memory you purchased for it. I would be more worried, if I spent money for more memory and it was never being used.

Inactive memory is memory that was once used by an application (possibly some video you were watching), but is no longer actively used. It is 'kept' just in case you want to use that same application with that same data again, such as watch the same video -- in which case OS X will not have to read it again from disk, or network. As soon as OS X needs more memory for the same or other application it will 'free' that Inactive memory and use it.

You should be worried if you had 16GB of RAM, don't run many memory demanding application and your computer is using swap (because it needs more memory) -- which will make it slow down. In your case, your swap usage is only 32MB, which is perfectly ok, since OS X (and any UNIX) will always touch swap, even with plenty of RAM available.

Michelasso wrote:

What didn't you understand about "Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed in a bootcamp partition of my MacBook"? Yes, the one for free, so I downloaded (and installed) the 64 bits version. It works. Mountain Lion won't because of the bleeding EFI32.

Then the 64 bits Win7 virtual machine has been running on top of Win 8 in a case, Lion in another. Because the virtual machines can run in 64 bits modes still booting the 32 bits kernel (as long as there is at least a Core 2 Duo), since the virtualizers are 64 bits applications.

If it sounds too confusing the point is simple: In my MacBook (and other Macs) Windows can boot at 64 bits, OS X can't. Also WIndows uses much less RAM than OS X.

You tried to load OS X Mountain Lion on the same Macbook?

I ask this, because so far the ML specification is that it will run on any core2 duo Mac out there and you mention core2 duo as prerequisite for your emulation, so presumably you have such machine.

So, you have an copy of Mountain Lion that does not install on your Mac, but Windows 8 CP 64bit does?

About memory management: if you compare Windows memory management with OS X you need to compare comparable set of applications, which is apparently not the case. Also, for what it is worth, you really need to compare Windows 8 with Mountain Lion, or even later version of OS X. The 'fair' current comparison is Lion vs. Windows 7.

Dear dkalchev,

In a perfect world, the scenario you depict would work.

In effect, the whole discussion has started because users notice significant and systematics performance decrease - even before launching memory intensive applications.

Rotating beach balls. Freezing applications - Native Apple apps, mind you. Have led me, for one, peep into activity monitor in the first place.

The most apalling indication available there is an awkward memory usage/allocation (usually CPU usge is fairly low, and disk I/O tends to be high)

So yes, I am looking for the coin under the lamp post, but where else would I look?

I know there's little hope, but: Do Apple support personnel ever read and reply here?

I wish I had a certified source of information on wether the problem is acknowledged, and if it is on any kind of a road map for a fix.

Krishh wrote:

I know in the earlier case you said no solution is needed as he was not running out of memory, but this is shocking for me. I just upgraded my ram from 4GB to 16GB for my 2011 iMac. Quicktime and Safari were the only apps running on the mac and I was left with 40 MB !!!!!!

Your screenshot shows QT Player & the associated VTDecoderXPCService were using a huge amount of CPU resources, suggesting you were playing or otherwise processing one or more heavily compressed high definition videos. As dkalchev mentioned, this may account for the large amount of inactive memory, which is not freed up until some process needs it.

dkalchev wrote:

You tried to load OS X Mountain Lion on the same Macbook?

I ask this, because so far the ML specification is that it will run on any core2 duo Mac out there and you mention core2 duo as prerequisite for your emulation, so presumably you have such machine.

So, you have an copy of Mountain Lion that does not install on your Mac, but Windows 8 CP 64bit does?

About memory management: if you compare Windows memory management with OS X you need to compare comparable set of applications, which is apparently not the case. Also, for what it is worth, you really need to compare Windows 8 with Mountain Lion, or even later version of OS X. The 'fair' current comparison is Lion vs. Windows 7.

Yup, I tried installing ML (legally. I have the code from Apple to download it) but it complains that my Mac is not supported. So I tricked it with some hacks found in the internet and now I have ML booting but in 32 bits mode. The 32 bits kernel is still there. Maybe because of the (unsupported? Booting holding 3 & 2 IS Supported) 32 bits kernel but the performances were just terrible. The memory consumption just the same.

Even funnier I can run ML in a virtual machine (in Lion) obviously booting Lion with 32 bits. For the reasons I explained before that the virtualizers are 64 bits applications. Obviously the graphic is not accelerated since I have a GMA 950. But I am not really allowed to talk about ML, it would be against the NDA.

Regarding the comparison Lion vs Win8, well I can say the the apps were the same. VirtualBox booting the same VM made in Lion. Plus Chrome with a dozen plus tabs (ok, in Lion I use Safari. burt also Chrome is a memory hog in Lion). Win8 never hit the backing storage/swap area. Even with no standalone applications running I can't have a virtual machine in Lion without getting memory swapped out. Actually not even having just Safari and Mail running for some time. Often it starts swapping hundreds of megabytes (3GB in Lion 10.7.0) no matter what.

Decalchev wrote ...

I know there's little hope, but: Do Apple support personnel ever read and reply here?

I wish I had a certified source of information on wether the problem is acknowledged, and if it is on any kind of a road map for a fix.

-----------

YES. I cannot agree more. If there was just a simpe note from apple that a fix was in progress or would be in mountain lion... Then I would be patient.

Jon

dkalchev wrote:

As soon as OS X needs more memory for the same or other application it will 'free' that Inactive memory and use it.

Please substitute "it will" with "it should" and we agree. In my experience it doesn't. The swapping area keeps growing and the Inactive memory stays the same. Well, actually the Active memory since for some reason in 10.7.3 the Active memory is much bigger than the Inactive memory while in 10.7.0 it was the opposite.

But yes, hopefully having 16GB (sixteen!!) of RAM it shouldn't be a problem. I wonder how the Oracle servers can run at all with 4-8GB of RAM in some Unix systems I admin , though.

yoelf wrote:

In effect, the whole discussion has started because users notice significant and systematics performance decrease - even before launching memory intensive applications.

Rotating beach balls. Freezing applications - Native Apple apps, mind you.

If you read through the huge number of posts in this discussion, it should be evident that some users report performance problems but others do not, even when they are reporting similar concerns about very little free memory. There is also often not a lot of info included about how many or which apps they are running at a time, & some disagreement about which apps are using excessive amounts of memory. There are some not very specific comments about how much memory they think apps should be using, often based on little more than a loose comparison with older OS X versions & sometimes even with an entirely different OS like Windows, as if each of them somehow supported the same features.

Nobody is saying the problems aren't real, but a lot of users seem unwilling to consider that there are several different possible causes for them, or if inherently poor memory management in the OS or in common apps was the cause of all these problems, to seriously consider why there isn't a straightforward way to explain why everybody isn't having them.

My MBP is maxed out on ram (8GB). After visiting the Genius Bar and discovering that Carbonite was sucking all the CPU out I was only using it when I was not working; but that soon become a pain as well. Eventually, I just totally removed Carbonite and went back to an external HD. I gained about an hour of battery life. Still the max is somewhere between 4 and 5 hours, but certainly not the 7 that I had before Lion. I don't require battery most of the time as my computer stays at home, but there have been a few times it was needed and ran out too soon. Being as it has been months since the problem came up and still no "real" solutions I am skeptical that one will come. I have heard that a Mountain Lion version is coming, but don't have any dates/details. I know I will not jump on that unless it truly says it has restored battery life and fixed the Lion issues. Regardless of this issue, I would not trade my Mac for any PC. Still hoping they will address it and restore their good name. 🙂

R C_R wrote:

Nobody is saying the problems aren't real, but a lot of users seem unwilling to consider that there are several different possible causes for them, or if inherently poor memory management in the OS or in common apps was the cause of all these problems, to seriously consider why there isn't a straightforward way to explain why everybody isn't having them.

Thank you for this. So, what do you suggest? how can one expect to identify one's individual problem, or alternatively a generic OS problem?

Admittedly, I am not a support or V&V engineer with Apple - I am just a customer expecting that pre installed (common) applications, in a reasonable - if not restricted - usage pattern (Safari, mail, Calendar), would "just work" as the slogan says.

If I were willing to hassle with obscure preferences and settings, to understand arkane HW-SW combination issues, or capable of jotting down memory management magic of my own, I would be certainly using Linux or Windows.

I count on Apple to design and implement performance related policies in its API's - So such problems would not occur. At the very least, I'd appreciate a formal venue for treating these issues. Unfortunately, such is not available in my country (beyond the advice to clean install).

yoelf wrote:

Thank you for this. So, what do you suggest? how can one expect to identify one's individual problem, or alternatively a generic OS problem?

A good start is not to arbitrarily pick any one thing as the cause of your particular problem(s) or to assume that similar sounding problems all have the same cause. Metaphorically, there are a lot of lamp posts to look under before it is reasonable to assume you have found the right one. 😉

If you are interested in getting help here in ASC, it is a very good idea to start your own discussion & avoid the confusion inherent in huge discussions like this one. Keep in mind that the only info we have to work with is what you provide so try to include as many details as you can about your problem & what (if anything) you have done to try to find its cause. If you don't, there isn't much we can offer besides some generic advice, much of which won't accomplish anything besides wasting time & energy investigating dead ends.

I know this probably isn't what you want to hear. It would be great if someone could solve your specific problems based on a brief description of them but that isn't likely to happen, anymore that it would be if you did that for a health issue or one with your car.

Hi dkalchev and R-C-R,

firstly thanks for your responses and Bingo...u guyz were right abt processing of high def vids on QT . I was using Quicktime export to 720p option on a 15 min video which was in 1080p format. Also safari was running. However I wanted to open DVD Studio pro and it would take forever to open and so I went ahead and close both QT and Safari after the exporting was completed. But the inactive memory would not go down. So then I decided to shutdown the mac and reopen and all was fine again.

dkalchev wrote:

What you saw is nothing to worry about. Your computer is making use of all the memory you purchased for it. I would be more worried, if I spent money for more memory and it was never being used.

🙂🙂 ...this surely makes me feel better. I think I was expecting my Mac to be blazing fast after the RAM upgrade, but in essense I guess it helps more in not slowing it down like before rather than speeding it up.

To conclude inactive memory management is something not in our hands. In other words I would have had to wait forever for it to be freed up. Right ?

Krishh

Krishh wrote:

I think I was expecting my Mac to be blazing fast after the RAM upgrade, but in essense I guess it helps more in not slowing it down like before rather than speeding it up.

To conclude inactive memory management is something not in our hands. In other words I would have had to wait forever for it to be freed up. Right ?

Theoretically having a lot of RAM your Mac should perform (slightly) better. Simplifying, the general idea is that OS X should make use of all the available RAM, keeping in memory anything that has been read from the disk (the parts that it can address again later, sure) and release it when other applications are requiring RAM once the free memory is low. Behaving like a sort of cache. This is the reason why closing an application and reopening it usually takes shorter than opening it the first time.

Unfortunately the keyword is "should". In MY experience that does really happen. Not as it is described by Apple. Even 10.7.0 and 10.7.3 seem to behave differently. The proportion between Active and Inactive memory is inverted. I wish there was a way to tune the memory management in OS X, just for testing purposes. But as far as I know that isn't possible.

Krishh wrote:

To conclude inactive memory management is something not in our hands. In other words I would have had to wait forever for it to be freed up. Right ?

Oficially there are no tunables to adjust the VM behavior of OS X. There are apparently knobs, such as with any other UNIX system -- but again, you have to really understand what you are doing.

I am already a bit curious about this, but to be frank, did never experience such behavior. My only source of complaint is the absurd Flash Player runtime, but that is apparently out of Apple's control (or even help), as Flash is weird runtime in about any other platform.

On my MBA with 4GB RAM I often use Safari with lots of windows and tabs, some VirtualBOX with Windows and Mail (another memory and CPU consumer, as I have IMAP mailbox with few million messages in folders).

The active and inactive memory in 10.7.3 indeed look reversed, but I believe this is actually a 'fix', because in earlier versions memory that was apparently in use and would not be freed was displayed as inactive.

If you provide it with enough time, or other stimulation 🙂 (some refer to the 'purge' command), OS X will free inactive memory. I have also observed that putting the laptop to sleep then waking it up miraciously frees up memory..

In any case, the MBA has flash storage, which is much faster than a mechanical drive and does not suffer that much from swapping.