Over 3GB of swap files with 16GB of RAM?

megagram wrote:

you offerred no help.

I've been trying to help you for over four days and all I've gotten are insults.

This is not a question of anyone trying to prove how smart they are, it is about decency and politeness. The next time you ask someone for help, try not to spit in their face, OK? That's just not cool.

You may continue your previous abuse. I'm not going to listen any longer.

Hi

I have a Macbook early 2011 and a Macbook pro Retina both with Mountain Lion. Yesterday I moved my Aperture Library to the new Retina Mac. So I started the Aperture and try to sort out pictures that are not required. After some minutes the new Macbook was the switch to another picture it was extreamly slow

I opend the activty Monitor ... swap more than > 3GB

But the joke was that enough system memory was free !!

If the system is booted and I use some applications all is fine, if you open Aperture (in my case) and you only watch photos he will begin to swap.

So it is Mountain Lion caused or Aperture .. I think 😝

Both Macbooks have the same behavoir !

Regards

Frank

Note among other things that memory availability as reported by Activity Monitor does not reflect the granularity of the free memory nor does it reflect the fact that swap sizes grow in large increments.

For example, if free memory were fragmented such that 5 GB total were available but only in disparate 1 GB chunks, the OS may have needed to write 2+ GB to swap in order to fulfill a request for 2 GB of continuous space.

Swap isn't only used when RAM is exhausted in total but instead may be needed when memory of the requested type has been exhausted.

Hi William

I disabled swap for testing, if I used Aperture the memory will be blow up extreamly (photo switching slows down). Iphoto with the same pictures not. In the moment I try different Applictions and he has not swap out anything... (enabled swap again)

I'm a little bit supprised, under Lion I had no trouble with memory and swapping (all Macbooks have 8G RAM). In my vaction I worked with Apertue (Lion, Mountain Lion was not released) and it was never a problem with the performance.

They changed the memory management in Mountain Lion ?

My opinion is that swapping is posion for my SSD's 😟

Regards

Frank

fbeckman wrote:

They changed the memory management in Mountain Lion ?

Lion runs with a 32-bit kernel by default. In Mountain Lion, that changed to the 64-bit kernel. Some applications that were limited in their RAM consumption before are no longer limited. I don't know about Aperture, but I know Photoshop behaves entirely differently. In Lion, Photoshop is limited to 3.2 GB of RAM but in Mountain Lion it can have it all. There is probably something similar going on with Aperture. You can try Adobe's instructions on running in 32-bit mode if you feedl RAM-constrained.

If anything, running a few apps in 32-bit mode is likely to increase memory pressure because you'll have to have both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of your frameworks loaded into RAM at the same time—unless, of course, there are bugs that cause the 64-bit implementation of a particular app to be a pig.

Hi

the kernel runs in 64Bit mode...

Aperture and Lightroom 4 both apps are swapping out

Iphoto a 32Bit application runs fine and swaps nothing out.

The programs are using different kinds of memory managment as the 32Bit ?

I had no problem with Lion and swapping, since Mountain Lion it is a big issue.

Regards

Frank

That was just a suggestion thrown out for someone to try. I have noticed a trend of otherwise reasonable people who claim that Lion/Mountain Lion needs at least 8 GB to run comfortably. I have been unable to reproduce any unusual virtual memory issues in Lion even when running in a 2 GB VM and opening 2 GB images. The difference is always that those people run Photoshop and I don't. Perhaps Photoshop does need 8GB in Lion whereas it ran fine with 4 in Snow Leopard - but that's Photoshop's problem. Why not stock up on RAM if you can afford Photoshop. It's just piles and piles of money.

Hi

I've 8GB of RAM.

It could be an issue of the kernel scan rates (hi / low marks ) ... If you open many pictures successively, you see the available free mem will be decrease very fast (switch from photo to another). Then he begins to swap !

If you do nothing the free mem will be increase but the swap out memory will be swaped out. If I close Aperture the swap will be decrase, but a little bit pageout data will be there.. That are other applications that are swaped out by the kernel.

Regards

Frank

I would agree. My 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 iMac with 12GB never had the slightest problem until Mountain Lion.

Now, mid afternoon or so, it starts getting slower and slower and although I can't see anything in "w" or Activity Monitor or "top" that seems out of place, there ARE large numbers of swap files and I think this starts after the system has been running its screen saver..

When it last turned to molassess, all I was running was two Chrome Windows with a total of 28 tabs and two terminal windows with a total of 5 tabs.

That's it.

Well, here's what appears to be my culprit... no hints as to the source. For now, I am disabling hibernation (by running sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 in terminal). That seems to correct the issue entirely.

Anwyay, heres my log snippet. I bolded the parts that appear to correspond to the swapping, which is happening during the hibernation process:

********************************************

8/19/12 6:52:42.262 PM com.apple.time[11]: Next maintenance wake [Backup Interval]: <date: 0x7f9258e12bb0> Sun Aug 19 19:16:07 2012 CDT (approx)

8/19/12 6:52:42.262 PM com.apple.time[11]: Requesting maintenance wake [Backup Interval]: <date: 0x7f9258e12bb0> Sun Aug 19 19:16:07 2012 CDT (approx)

8/19/12 6:52:42.277 PM WindowServer[1336]: Created shield window 0xa4 for display 0x042803c0

8/19/12 6:52:42.307 PM WindowServer[1336]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x7fbee4d00370(2000), shield 0x7fbee2a63870(2001)

8/19/12 6:52:42.414 PM WindowServer[1336]: device_generate_lock_screen_screenshot: authw 0x7fbee4d00370(2000), shield 0x7fbee2a63870(2001)

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate image path: /var/vm/sleepimage

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: sizeof(IOHibernateImageHeader) == 512

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: AirPort_Brcm43xx::powerChange: System Sleep

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: kern_open_file_for_direct_io(0) took 1 ms

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: Opened file /var/vm/sleepimage, size 17179869184, partition base 0x0, maxio 400000 ssd 1

8/19/12 6:52:43.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate image major 1, minor 0, blocksize 512, pollers 4

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_allocate_cluster - send HI_WAT_ALERT

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

8/19/12 6:52:45.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

8/19/12 6:52:48.000 PM kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

8/19/12 6:52:48.000 PM kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

8/19/12 6:52:52.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_alloc_pages flags 00000000, gobbling 0 pages

8/19/12 6:52:52.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_setup(0) took 9067 ms

8/19/12 6:52:54.000 PM kernel[0]: IOThunderboltSwitch(0x0)::listenerCallbackStatic - Thunderbolt HPD packet for route = 0x0 port = 11 unplug = 0

8/19/12 6:52:54.000 PM kernel[0]: IOThunderboltSwitch(0x0)::listenerCallbackStatic - Thunderbolt HPD packet for route = 0x0 port = 12 unplug = 0

8/19/12 6:52:54.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_page_list_setall start 0xffffff803fb45000, 0xffffff82393ac000

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_page_list_setall time: 490 ms

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: pages 1364096, wire 458314, act 356698, inact 63640, cleaned 0 spec 239390, zf 246054, throt 0, could discard act 0 inact 0 purgeable 0 spec 0 cleaned 0

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_page_list_setall found pageCount 1364096

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IOHibernatePollerOpen, ml_get_interrupts_enabled 0

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IOHibernatePollerOpen(0)

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: encryptStart 13310

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: writing 1355102 pages

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: hibernate_machine_init: state 2, image pages 458110, sum was 45082592, image1Size 28d87a00, conflictCount 4589, nextFree 51bf

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IOHibernatePollerOpen(), ml_get_interrupts_enabled 0

8/19/12 6:53:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IOHibernatePollerOpen(0)

********************************************

Any hints appreciated, but at this point I am filing a bug report with Apple. This is an annoying waste of my SSD's write cycles. Technically, hibernation in general is, so I guess it's just as well.