Inactive memory is huge hit on performance

I am ignoring nothing Software: you are because you don't understand that in this case without more about the Joa glitches, you can not even be sure that it is the same situation as the others. Please stop quarrelling and accept my explanation of not using a bandage. I also know not what is going on (have suspicions), but I advise strongly against suppressing symptoms (in any field).

Joa: plse give the screenshots and answer Linc's question.

Lex

You have far too many pageouts. Some process, or the kernel, has a memory leak. Click the heading of the "Real Mem" column in the process table to order the entries by memory usage. You may have to click it again to get the highest value at the top. Post a screenshot of the whole window.

Until they get it fixed in 10.7.3 (and I think they just might 😉) if you install XCode you will get a handy utility to purge inactive memory /usr/bin/purge

I've put this on my 10.6 servers which have had the problem with not using Inactive memory and swapping out instead, I made a recurring launchd (Lingon) to run at 1:00 am - and it keeps the free memory free. I have no hope of 10.6 getting any bug fixes, but 10.7 is current and they should be able to fix this if we bug report them enough. Lion seems to be hard hit because Safari 5.1 introduces the memory sucking sandbox process which is quite greedy and then the OS itself seems not to be very generous in reallocating Inactive memory.

I know there are skeptics and defenders of the "infallible" MacOS, but you need to stand down and stop opinionating on issues that aren't affecting you as if they couldn't possibly affect anyone else! For goodness sake: "reset PRAM, SMC, is the RAM to the exact spec"? If the RAM wasn't to spec the system probably wouldn't boot and if it did it might affect performance but not the ability to mark RAM as Inactive/Active/Free.

So let me say, if this is affecting you then I believe you, download XCode and you get /usr/bin/purge which can be automated to run or run manually.

but 10.7 is current and they should be able to fix this if we bug report them enough.

As long as everyone keeps in mind that this forum is not a way to report anything and they use one of the following feedback paths, then you might get your wish:

BugReporter

<http://bugreporter.apple.com>

Free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) account needed for BugReporter.

Anyone can get a free account at:

<http://developer.apple.com/programs/register/>

And/Or

Mac OS X Feedback

<http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html>

Joel, please, if you read this thread, you already know that the problem is not with the amount of inactive memory at all, and that pruging inactive memory is just a counterproductive bandage. We have asked Joa already four times about the RealMem screenshot, and he does not give it.

Oh Schellings, do stop bleeting like a stuck pig. First you start an argument with the OP,

LexSchellings wrote:

You are wrong.

Then you start an argument with me,

LexSchellings wrote:

I disagree

and then you have the temerity to accuse me of quarrelling. 😁 😁 😁

Now you're attacking somebody else trying to help as well as taking a sideswipe at the OP. Get over yourself. If the OP doesn't want to take your suggestions, that's his business (and given your **** attitude I'm not ******* surprised). Deal with it or move along.

___________

Meanwhile, there is an excellent discussion of memory usage here and some lucid explanations by R C-R. You should read the whole page from top to bottom because it is very educational. In some way it does support what others are saying, but it also points out that it is far more complicated than one may think, as the quote below highlights:

R C-R wrote:

A bit more on the difficulties of trying to use Activity Monitor as a diagnostic tool for memory use problems can be found here, specifically why it is not a good tool for finding memory leaks. It may also help clear up some of the confusion about real & private memory.

It boils down to this: there are no shortcuts. If you don't understand the complexities of how memory management in OS X works -- & especially if you don't even understand what the per process numbers shown in Activity Monitor really represent or how they are computed -- then there is no way you can tell from these numbers alone if some process is using too much memory.

Common sense alone should tell you that if that were possible then that's what programmers would do & there would be no need for the debugging tools Apple provides.

softwater wrote:

Oh Schellings, do stop bleeting like a stuck pig. First you start an argument with the OP,

LexSchellings wrote:

You are wrong.

Then you start an argument with me,

LexSchellings wrote:

I disagree

and then you have the temerity to accuse me of quarrelling. 😁 😁 😁

Well you do become a pain in the *** after a while jumping in and confusing alsmost every post you see.

And you expect the entire forum to let you be the only one here with an opinion or a solution. No wonder so many people are confused here.

Over and out

Back to the issue:

Joasousa wrote:

Page outs: 3,31 GB

Swap: 850 MB

Wired: 2,72 GB

Active: 3,52 GB

Inactive 1,7 GB.

Page in: 21,67 GB.

PS: Right now performance isn't great but I'm not getting beach balls, CPU is Idle. I running Chrome, Safari and vmware fusion with a 2 GB virtual machine (and nothing else).

Using Parallels I don't have any issues at all. Seems that

Fusion may be where the issue is by using up memory

and not releasing it properly to the system.

I have 8gig RAM and have a 4 gig Win7 VM in Parallels

and quite often will have Safari, Acrobat Reader, Open

Office open and actively working back and forth between

all and have no issues with beachballs or slow performance.

On the VM side will have engineering apps running from

various vendors: Cypress, Microchip, Xilinx, Matlab,

Cadence to name a few. Safari can get a little sluggish,

it will do that sometimes even if it is the only app

running after a fresh boot. But that is just a Safari issue.

This is a similar work environment on 2 machines:

2011 Mac Mini quad core i7 Server

2011 13" dual core i7 Macbook Pro

both with 8 gig installed.

Moved from Fusion some time ago because of

system issues. Parallels just seems to play a lot

nicer with Macs than Fusion, at least with Windows

VMs.

I agree, concerning Parallels, I even have 2 VM's running. Although I did never have problem like these with VMware, I prefer Paralles. It may be Fusion, but we will see more when Joa sends the screenshot of the Real Mem column. Linc will easily solve the case, he is an expert in such cases.

Joasousa wrote:

The "infallible" MacOS is really starting to **** me off, Lion is a mess.

revert to SL

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3525616

or Windows perhaps.

Good Luck

First, using the word "retard" as you did is offensive. Second, most people here would say that the fact that you work in IT would make it a virtual certainty that you don't know what you're doing. Don't come to these forums and throw around insulting terms while acting like you know everything. You DON'T know everything, or you wouldn't have to ask us!

If you are still interested in getting help here, you're going to need to be open to forgetting what you "know" is the problem and start listening to other ideas.