iPhoto inactivates RAM in Mountain Lion

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iPhoto inactivates RAM in Mountain Lion

Hi,

Since I installed Mountain Lion, iPhoto converts 'Free' RAM into 'Inactive' RAM until the free RAM goes to 0 -- then nothing works anymore.

I used the command 'purge' as advised in this link http://www.ernieflores.net/osx-page-3/free-up-inactive-memory-in-mac-os-x-with-p urge-command/ to reassign the 'Inactive' RAM into 'Free' RAM, but as long as I use iPhoto the 'Free' RAM gets converted into 'Inactive' until it is totally depleted.

I never got that problem before, neither with Lion or Snow Leopard. Now each time i use iPhoto I get my Free RAM depleted and the computer just stop working!

Any idea what is wrong here?

Thanks

Laurent

Here are my computer details:

Model Name:	iMac
Model Identifier:	iMac9,1
Processor Name:	Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:	2,93 GHz
Number of Processors:	1
Total Number of Cores:	2
L2 Cache:	6 MB
Memory:	4 GB
Bus Speed:	1,07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:	IM91.008D.B08
SMC Version (system):	1.37f3

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 4, 2012 3:44 AM

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Answer 1

va1774

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Aug 6, 2012 6:01 PM in response to Pollux007

I have been having the same problem but I can not yet figure out what application is causing this issue. What I did do today was to quit all runing applications and use the Purge command in terminal. Then put the computer to sleep. I went on an errand and when I came back a few hours later and woke the computer and opened Mail and Safari, the Inactive memory went from 42mb to almost 1gb in the time it toook to open those two programs. I have seen it rise to almost 2gbs within a 20 second span while the Mail and Safari apps were open. But I have seen it do the same thing with other apps too. It's never consistent, that's what makes me believe something is happeneing in the background that causes this.

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Answer 2

Pollux007 Author

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Aug 7, 2012 10:53 AM in response to va1774

I do not get this problem with Mail or Safari or any other application but iPhoto!

One reason could be that I have too many pictures in my database, more than 52,000. When I start browsing the pictures the Free RAM decreases by about 10-30Mb per picture while the inactive RAM increases by the same amount.

The only fix I could find besides buying more RAM was to install Picasa3. It works very well without converting the Free RAM into inactive RAM. I also realized that Picasa3 had a much better algorithm to recognize faces compared to iPhoto. And it is so easy to make nice collages. I guess I'll drop iPhoto...

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Answer 3

Aug 16, 2012 10:06 PM in response to Pollux007

It isn't just iPhoto. This also happens with Parallels. There are other apps this is occuring with, but I haven't been able to identify them yet.

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Answer 4

Sep 18, 2012 7:46 AM in response to Pollux007

I'm having a similar problem. Inactive memory runs rampant. I have tried fixing permissions (even though thats more HD related) reset PRAM, purged in terminal, deleted unnecessary apps, and tried narrowing down the issue with no real success. I did quit all apps except for Safari and Activity monitor, and also quit the iphotostream process in Activity Monitor.

I am running OSX 10.8.1 on an iMac 27 i7 with 16GB memory.

Right now the Free memory is 12GB and the inactive is 300MB but slowly climbing. Much slower now since I have no apps running. Ill let you know I come up with anything else.

I may do an archive and install of Mountain Lion this weekend.

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