Q: Lion - Memory Usage Problems

I had a new MAc with Lion. I had upgraded to 8GB and still was seeing issues. I upgraded to 16GB on recommendations by genius bar guy, but the problem still remains. Even when I have very few apps running I'm using up 75% of the RAM which is ridiculous. My PC with Windows7 and 8gb of Rams works more smoothly that my Mac Book Pro.

I just read all 50 pages of this thread, and I have to say, I agreed WHOLE HEARTEDLY with our friend Michael from Italy.

Our macs paging out to hard drives with so much inactive RAM is just rediculous. And all the arguements about sloppy programming and irresponsible footprints seems like apple loyalists doing anything they can to escape one key point.

Maybe Macs just aren't the best answer for someone who needs to swim in the virtualization/creative suite intense end of the pool.

I for one, love the mac os, when its working properly. but i'm starting to feel that it's just not up to some of the tasks i need it for.

I think the cpukid00 on youtube is the onely one with the right idea.

I found that VMWare was the hungry little piggy that created a lot of inactive RAM. I still have to run WIndows XP for some stuff at work, just installed a Windows 7 image, I'll see if that is nicer. I wouldn't be surprised, XP did some pretty dumb stuff, always writing to the hard drive for god knows what reason.

Anyway even when I quit VMWare, Inactive remains high, because the OS doesn't know if VMWare will launch again and want to use the mem again? But as I've said before, the reclaiming of Inactive by an app is ridiculously slow, as it requests a morsel, is given one, then asks for another... ad nauseum. So I just run purge and get it all back in one go.

Also, I don't think purge is part of the new XCode 4.2? So grab an old copy of XCode if you need it. Or try one of the other tools out there (I haven't). Good luck.

Here is a tiny script-app I made that makes running the Purge command supersimple & superquick:

http://www.box.com/s/2dgczeb4jl/1/19804470/1887345555/1

And here's a screenshot of my own laptop screen that will provide further info about this tiny Purge script-app:

http://www.box.com/s/2dgczeb4jl/1/19804470/1887536803/1

Or you can just go to my publicly-open directory on box.com & pick & choose those things from there:

http://www.box.com/kevinkendall-public

KK

MacBook7,1 @ 2.4GHz | Crucial 256GB SSD+8Gig RAM

the roony-isms are solid gold.

I, too, experience the unbounded memory leak whenever I run Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion.  I disabled Accelerated 3D Graphics, and the VM's memory footprint seems to continue to grow.

I'm running VMWare Fusion 4.1.2.

My application is Visual Studio 11 Beta.

Update:

I disabled "Hard disk buffering" in Advanced settings, and this seems to slow the rate of the memory leak.  Also, the Inactive memory is much lower.

Thnx Bernard.

Yeah, I liked Andy Rooney, too. He was one of those bigdog media guys who actually thought for themselves. And broadcasted that way too, with personal & sincere thoughtfulness. And with just the right amount of crotchety shrewdness. Days of yore, unfortunately.........

But I'm surprised you could get that thing working. I UL'd it several days ago, got sidetracked, & forgot to get back to test it out.

Well, I just tested it out. Don't work.

The index.html file calls up all the java stuff & pics & so forth, but the slideshow doesn't begin playing.

Turns out, looks like, that hotlinking is for box.com paid subscribers only. Which I ain't. First time I tried that, obviously. So it looks like you DL'd it all & ran it on your home machine.

I may copy it all to my domain soon. But @ the 2GB/mo bandwidth limit my hoster limits me to, not sure about that.

Glad you liked it though. I think this Andy Rooney-related presentation is one of those media things that ought to be shared. Helps keep we crazyfied pre-apocolyptic 2012 people more grounded. And hopefully, longer than just a few minutes after viewing it...

So how's that little purging app of mine working on your system, Bernard? Good? Bad? Just 'nyyya... ok'?

It's been DL'd several times by folks on this forum & I'm curious what the consensus feedback is, whether folks like how quickly it works, or any probs resulting from it (shouldn't be any at all though).

KK

I actually just thumbed through the pngs and jpgs in the folders. i didn't attempt to test the slideshow part - i'm not a paid box user either so alot of the functionalities are ghosted.

the purge app works well. it clears up inactive memory and allows VM's a little more "wiggle room". I notice if i try to use the 10.8 dev preview in a VM and also run apps in lion, i need to run it regularly.

the whole process really has shown me how much of a hog chrome can be as well.

thanks for the effort! it's helping us with a problem everyone swears doesn't exist.

I'm asking myself the same thing... Installed Snow Leopard after Lion crashed several times when it was released and now, I'm using Snow Leopard and yep, it uses quite less amount of RAM; just 500 something of RAM while Lion, around 1,3 GB...

Any solution for that?

Thanks

Ø3.

yeap, i have the same problem

in my new MacBOOK Pro 13'' I7 4GB

I bought a MacBook Pro few days ago and I'm still waiting for it. I will have it in my hands in the next 15 days I'm thinking on installing Snow Leopard on it due these memory issues. Snow Leopard is frankly a lot of faster than Lion. Any app opens, runs and close faster than in Lion. The finder is much faster too. Even the same apps I use in Lion are much faster in SL. Opening multiple apps is also much faster too. Definitely, SL is the OS!

I am glad you think Snow Leopard is the OS!

Personally I don't. I have seen no problems with Lion on either my MBP or MacPro. Nor have the users I help to supprt with iMac or MBP. 

Allan

I probably need to do a clean install of Lion? I just upgraded from SL to Lion (then I installed SL in other disk partition, because of BootCamp).

Thanks,

Ø3

I and the users I support all did upgrades. None of us do anything with BootCamp or Windows.

Allan

"I and the users I support all did upgrades. None of us do anything with BootCamp or Windows.

Allan"

that's the whole point. the users that DO use virtualization and graphic intensive programs (even the ones that do SSD and heavy RAM upgrades) experience issues with Lions memory management.

we matter just as much as those that chose to use their apple products in a purely OSX environment.

and honestly, there is a prevailing attitude on these boards from experienced users that feels an awful lot more like an "if you don't like it don't use it" approach than "hey, lets figure out how to make this work best for everyone together." approach.

everyone agrees that the hardware product that apple produces is the best available at the retail level. otherwise, no one would buy it. but simply sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that the users that have software problems and want to talk about them don't exist, simply because you choose to ignore them, is immature.

For those that are looking for help with their virtualization ram needs, there are Purge apps and related ram purging scripts available (like the one above) with a simple google search. I'd post the link in this forum but posting similar links previously has gotten my posts deleted.