What is, mach_kernel ?

It is the heart of the operating system, known as the 'kernel'. MACH is the name of kernel originally developed by Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. It has of course be modified extensively by Apple for Mac OS X.

Whatever you do "DO NOT" delete, modify, move it, change permissions on it, etc... or your system will not boot.

There are a lot of other files at the root of your file system, that are essential to the normal operation of Mac OS X. You should not mess with them, unless you really know what you are doing, and then it would be wise to have 1 (or several) backups, as messing with operating system files can easily result in disabling the system, requiring a restore from backup.

Message was edited by: BobHarris

You have a lot of questions which are not well answered here.

Rather than doing 'ps' or running Activity Monitor and asking people here the role of everything, I suggest you start with Amit Singh's EXCELLENT book:

http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp/0321278542

It's a bit out of date in that it covers 10.4 or 10.5, but it is an EXTREMELY thorough background, and given the nature of your questions I'd say you should read it before asking more of them. This is not the appropriate place to ask what mach_kernel is.

William Lloyd, Where would be a good place to ask questions like that? As a newby to the MAC OS world myself, I need training on how to deal with the OS. But my concern is why is this not the place to ask questions such as the one above? Are you saying that this is the place of last resort and we should all google/research stuff before we ask questions here. As this is my first time being within the community, this inquiring mind wants to know.

I am afraid technology got ahead of me. I was fine with DOS, but now that I am on a MAC, I have no idea what I am doing. So I am looking for some good training tools. (I should say I never mess with the MAC OS as I used to with DOS - I am too afraid to!) But since I now have to pay to have someone to work on my Mini, I need to know where to ask questions here in the community as I can not afford the repair bills

Is there a bibliography somewhere here that us newbies can refer to? The only books I am familiar with are the ones by Randy Singer. Besides Singh's book, are there others you would recommend. Maybe I should start with an Idiot's Guide to Dummies and their MACs. LOL 😝.

I just joined the community in hopes someone would have an answer for my current problem, but now I am not sure where to post the question and am afraid of being yelled at for posting in the wrong place. I have yet to see anything about RAM and my unused RAM keeps disappearing. The only change I made was switching from Pandora to Spotify. I am not currently using any Adobe products except Reader. I am having to restart the computer almost every 2 hours.

So suggestions as to where to post this question?

Whay are you having to restart your computer every 2 hours?

As for a 'good book', I suggest David Pogue's Missing Manual - Switching to Mac, The Mountain Lion Edition. It's great for those making the 'switch' from Windows to the most current OS.

Clinto

wilssearch wrote:

William Lloyd, Where would be a good place to ask questions like that? As a newby to the MAC OS world myself, I need training on how to deal with the OS. But my concern is why is this not the place to ask questions such as the one above? Are you saying that this is the place of last resort and we should all google/research stuff before we ask questions here.

I think William was referring specifically to the several very general questions OSX128bit has posted recently. It's kind of like someone who wants to learn how an engine works posting a series of questions about what its parts are. For things like that a Google search or a book are much better learning aids.

These forums are much better suited to specific questions that users can answer from their own shared experience, the kind of things that would be difficult to find in a book or a search of Apple's support site, etc. It is always a good idea to start with these more comprehensive sources if you can -- in fact, some will lead to topics in these forums that have already been answered quite well, saving you a lot of time.

Of course, it is difficult to do that if your question can't be condensed into a good search term or you get thousands of unrelated hits from your search. We (the community of users) will try to be as helpful as we can with such things but it is everybody's best interests if you try to do your "homework" first & rely on us to help with the parts you don't understand or find confusing.

It seems that the amount of free RAM manages to decrease to less than 500 mb and I can't even get the curser to move. So I restart and get anywhere from 1.5 to over 2 GB. I can't tell what process is the memory hog. I have learned to turn off the Activity Monitor as soon as I check the stats so it won't eat up memory.

The only thing that changed is that I switched from Pandora to Spotify but I play it about the same amount of time. I upgraded from 2 to 4 GB a couple of years ago and to Mountain Lion mid 2012. So I just can't see what the problem is. But I also have to admit I don't know where else to look. Out of the 500 GB hard drive I am only using about 68 GB, so that is not the issue. I also had to replace the hard drive last December and I upgraded to 500 GB at that time.

Another interesting point is that whenever I wanted to restart or shut down previously, I had to make sure all programs were closed. Now it shuts down or restarts without telling me to close the programs. I also just reloaded ML again as I had the nasty gray screen. I am getting ready to check to see if the reload fixed that problem. Otherwise it takes between 5 to 10 minutes to restart. 😮 What is a girl to do? I am not sure McMinny was meant for my kind of use, but it's the only MAC in my budget.

Also, Thank you for mentioning the Pogue book. I forgot about just how good those books are.

R C-R wrote:

wilssearch wrote:

William Lloyd, Where would be a good place to ask questions like that? As a newby to the MAC OS world myself, I need training on how to deal with the OS. But my concern is why is this not the place to ask questions such as the one above? Are you saying that this is the place of last resort and we should all google/research stuff before we ask questions here.

I think William was referring specifically to the several very general questions OSX128bit has posted recently. It's kind of like someone who wants to learn how an engine works posting a series of questions about what its parts are. For things like that a Google search or a book are much better learning aids.

Not having been privy to the prior conversations, I could not tell if that is what he meant of if he meant something else.

I just knew I didn't want a repeat performance that happened to me on another forum where I was taken to task for doing something that I had no idea was approved of - and it was not done politely. Therefore I wanted to make sure I was in the right place!

Because I love to do research, I almost always do so before asking questions of others. I tried doing some of the things I read about online, but they made no difference to whatever is sucking up my RAM. But I think I fixed the grey screen problem. I will find out shortly as I finally decide to take a nap.

Anyway, after I study the Pogue book (I can't believe I forgot about how great the Missing Manual books are!) and the one you suggested, hopefully I will have a better grasp of what goes on under the hood.

wilssearch wrote:

Not having been privy to the prior conversations, I could not tell if that is what he meant of if he meant something else.

Just FYI, you can click on anybody's avatar or name in a topic & go to their profile page where you can see a list of their most recent posts, plus some other info they have made public. Sometimes it is useful to do that to get an idea of their level of expertise or what they are interested in, especially if their question doesn't include much background information.

Also, there is no strict requirement to do so but it is considered good "netiquette" to start your own discussion when its topic is substantially different from the one you are viewing. Particularly if you can give it a descriptive title, it also helps get it the attention it deserves. Otherwise, it is likely to go unnoticed by those most able to help.

Since you have already mentioned your problems in this topic, if you do decide to start your own topic, you might consider posting a link to it in a reply here after you start it. (Just right click on your topic title & select "copy link" from the menu that pops up, then paste that into your reply.)

Thanks R C-R! That makes sense. I have found that each forum I get involved with tends to have its own way of navigating the site and thus I get confused easily when I first enter a new place! 😝