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imagent memory leak in Mountain Lion

I've experienced a crippling memory leak with imagent.app taking up:


60gb of virtual memory

13gb real memory

75% CPU

User uploaded file

After force-quitting it's freed up the RAM but not the virtual memory and, so, I'm still getting this:

User uploaded file

...despite having 150gb disk space free (was 210gb this morning!).


Obviously the virtual memory has filled up and not been freed. I'm sure I can clean up the swap space issue but I'm concerned about this ongoing.


All the related articles discuss iMessages beta, but I've got a clean Mountain Lion install that has never had iMessages beta installed.

Macbook Pro 8,3-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 14, 2012 4:58 PM

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30 replies

Aug 23, 2012 3:41 PM in response to hellodaniel

Since my Mountain Lion install, I too have begun noticing 40+ gigs of hd space slowly dwindle away until I am forced to restart to retreive the space on my startup disk. I havent caught the imagent yet as the culprit, but this I am now getting "startup disk out of space" errors and cant find the app that is direct culprit.

Sep 17, 2012 1:58 PM in response to hellodaniel

Dear HelloDaniel,


I'm getting this same issue at different levels on three different machines. Two of the machines have Mountain Lion installed and one only has Lion installed. I orginally thought this was a hardware issue. (One of the main machines could not boot into safe mode.) I'm now experiencing it on my work machine and a machine at a friend's house where I have a user account.


If I was to take a step back I would think it has to do with some software issue between all three computers. I don't have the same sw on all machines but I really can't track it down to anything except my apple id/icloud account being active on all three accounts.


I'm hoping that this gets fixed soon. If anybody responds with a solution to the "imagent memory leak" issue I would love to hear about it.


KJB

Sep 24, 2012 3:44 PM in response to hellodaniel

try typing "purge" in terminal, that should free unused memory back to the OS.


my OS running on SSD had some issues, but might had been related to the SSD, once i flashed the firmware all seems to be working ok.


as for Duosx comment, there are some settings to stop the disk from filling up, this most likly coused when the OS sleeps and save the active ram to disk files. but could be just plain old corrupted files, have you tried using diskutil and repairing the disks? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4150003?start=0&tstart=0

(cannot locat atm the link to the sleep settings, some terminal syntax)

HTH

dz

Sep 25, 2012 10:29 AM in response to hellodaniel

The reducing disk space may be explained in Pondini's well known user tips.


http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html


The virtual memory problem may be related to third party software, which could be checked by a Safe Mode boot.


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455


Somebody likened the 'purge' command to rolling a hand grenade into the supermarket to clear the queue at the checkout. It will work, but it is probably faster in the end, to wait patiently.

Sep 25, 2012 11:53 AM in response to putnik

That's nice that you're trying to be helpful, but none of that is in the slightest relevant. The problem is runaway memory usage by a background process which appears to be part of Messages. The problem has evidently been around since the Messages beta, and is still present in at least 10.8.1 and possibly 10.8.2 The fix has to come from Apple.

Sep 27, 2012 2:38 PM in response to duosx

Yep, I'm still experiencing it too. Work computer and home computer. As an odd aside, while there's no pattern when it happens on my home computer it does seem to crop up + or - 10 mins at 12:30 every day on my work computer. I kill it in the Activity Monitor, imagent and Messages and most often I restart Messages and it calms down.

Sep 28, 2012 12:47 PM in response to hellodaniel

Same problem. Upon bootup my memory is drained very quickly by the process Imagent. I stop the process in Activity Monitor, but it returns instantly though I am not running the new messages app. After killing it a number of times n Activity Montior, it settles down and does not chew through the RAM. Any ideas on how to kill this process entirely? I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow, but it is right before kickoff for my college team and I'd hate to spent the afternoon goign through this with a 'Genius.'

Sep 28, 2012 1:12 PM in response to hellodaniel

I was importing some stuff to aperture last night. I noticed it too. A reboot fixed it, but what a POS. Sound stutters, crashes, video stutters, corruption of aperture, and now this. (Yes, I know aperture was updated today. But seriously?!?! I already fixed it on my own. Apple is the new version of digital waste). I can't believe how bad mountain lion is.


They need to fix this and fast before other steps are taken.

Oct 11, 2012 10:49 AM in response to hellodaniel

Having this issue on two macbooks ever since upgrading to Mountain Lion:

-brand new Retina Macbook Pro

-2 year old Macbook Pro


Apple support had me go to the store, where they verified that the new machine's hardware was fine. Of course the issue didn't happen when I was there, but both the phone support and genius folks told me the issue was software and that my next step was to wipe the entire drive and start over again. I'd really like to avoid havign to reinstall all the software....

Nov 8, 2012 6:12 AM in response to hellodaniel

Still no solution? I am crying at my computer these days :-/ My MBP 13" 2011 is slowing down like **** after something randomly happens. There is no free memory, that is the problem. But no idea what causes it... This reminds me of the times we used to reboot Windows machine frequently due to the same problem ... Seems like Apple is going backwards :-(

imagent memory leak in Mountain Lion

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