Mavericks and memory (Ram)

berndfrombremen wrote:

sorry, take a look at my last screenshot !!!!

MAIL - no reaction

kernel_task: more than 4GB of Ram using

THAT ist the Problem at this moment !!! same in normal mode !

I realize that it is the same in Safe mode.

If you send a report when in a normal boot we can see what versions of kernel extensions are loaded and what launchd jobs are failing etc.

Safe mode appears to have loaded all your user login items, so any one of those could cause issues with the OS. The same is true with all the 3rd party preference panes.

Have you tried using Mail in another user account?

Set up Mail in a new user account & see if it has issues (after all the email has synced).

Also reboot, & login to your user account whilst holding shift as you click 'login' at the login window. This will disable the login items & see if it makes any difference.

You can also repeat this in Safe mode to disable the 3rd party extensions & then use shift as you login to disable the login items.

It's very easy to blame the OS, but unless you start from a clean install there is no telling what could be modifying the OS. If it is a plug-in or system hack (like an old 'defaults write' command) it could be at the user level or the system level.

whats wrong here ? too much errors imo.

try to open Mail now more than 1 hour ! actually the MAIL APP Window is open, but can´t see any Mails or other content.

now, after 70 Minutes MAIL opens and is now loading Mails from the last 10 Days over POP3 !

but is very sloooow.

activity now:

Keep staring at Mail's RAM usage if you like or you can try doing some actual troubleshooting.

Sorry I can't help you if you refuse to look at the troubleshooting suggestions, I don't have an answer, however I can try to help you work out what is causing this. An etrecheck report might help.

Try to isolate the issue via safe mode & a new user account.

Also see the 'All messages' section of /Applications/Utilities/Console as the RAM usage is increasing in Mail.

Please don't post 1000's of log messages, just select a few sample ones.

Add me to the list of dissatisfied customers: iMovie worked great in Mountain Lion but now that I have upgraded to Mavericks the system chokes and stops. Terrible!

I got my Macbook Pro precicely to handle photos and home movies because my PC was behaving, well, like my machine is now.

What seems particularly galling as I read this commentary is that those with a functioning system are willing to blame not the geniuses at Apple, who designed this disaster, but the customers. Apparently once they understand that their system is functioning as designed they will be perfectly happy that it doesn't work!

Really? It's a bit like blaming the buyer for "minor " flaws in his Ford Pinto. After all, the car still ran...

(If you are too young, look it up)

Iron Jay you are funny and point on. I burned a movie a few days ago and that one program with my browser and other programs off used 2gb of RAM then used SWAP. I have a similar program on my Windows box and it uses less then 500mg RAM to burn films. That same program used around the same amount in Mountain Lion. Maybe its me and my system. Its nice that several tech experts have posted. I have little desire to start using terminal commands and trying to diagnose the problem. This isn't a Linux distro this is OS X. I have ML on a external drive and it runs better then Mavericks which is on my laptops hard drive.

I'll be getting a SSD soon and I'll install ML and not Mavericks on it. I'm not sharp enough to figure this all out nor do I want to spend hours trying to have a fast reliable system. Heck I have enough of trying to get things going in ARCH and to a degree in Fedora.

I agree that there is something definitely wrong with Mavericks. I can't have too many apps open like I had with ML. For the first few days it was brutally slow. There seemed to be a lot going on (more than usual) with my time machine backup drive. Now I keep 'Memory Clean' open and click clean whenever the system drops below 1G available. And I also restart the system often rather than let it sleep. Things seem to be better than when I first installed as I usually have more than a gig available. However, once in awhile when I hit on a site loaded with images and ads it drops quickly to 10 meg available now. As a forum, we need to find out the difference between those machines that are working fine and the ones that are crawling like a Pinto. There's something wrong between how each machine, good and bad, manages memory. Lets put the bandages aside and find out where the gaps are please.

I like Tomnar8r’s idea. As written before I am really pleased with my old Mac Pro and Mavericks – and this with an installation that was more or less migrated over several machines from OS X’ beginning onward, with quite some third party extensions and disabled swap. I do not want to spam this forum if there is no sense in it, therefore especially to Drew: Would EtreCheck profiles of my machine be helpful?

I'm all for comparing 'happy vs sad' EtreCheck reports if anyone thinks it will help.

Just label the happy Mac reports clearly so we don't try to troubleshoot them.

Maybe it will get people to post some reports, it's kinda difficult to see what everyone is complaining about when not many people believe in posting data. I have been using the "remove or update" system with a few 10.9 users & it seems to help.

What I can't aggree with Tomna8r is 'cleaning memory', personally I think it's bad idea, the OS simply allocates a cache of files in memory, if you don't use them it releases it when required already explained earlier by UliB.

'Cleaning' tools are simply causing you to wait for that data to reload down the line.

Not to get credits for what I did not create: I just repeated what ulzeraj and Barney-15 wrote before me. Didn’t know of the disk cache before.

But anyway: Here’s my EtreCheck report of my Mac Pro running really fine under Mavericks – in order to label it accordingly:

* Please do not debug * ;-)

(But note there´s still an outdated Tech Tool Pro running. Should do some cleaning myself …)

-----------------

Hardware Information:

Mac Pro (Early 2009)

Mac Pro - model: MacPro4,1

1 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPU: 4 cores

24 GB RAM

Video Information:

ATI Radeon HD 4870 - VRAM: 512 MB

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0

AirPlay: Version: 1.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3

Startup Items:

WiFiUtilityStartUp - Path: /System/Library/StartupItems/WiFiUtilityStartUp

ProTec6 - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ProTec6

ProTec6b - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ProTec6b

System Software:

OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 0 days 8:25:1

Disk Information:

HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GH41N

HGST HDS724040ALE640 disk1 : (4 TB)

EFI (disk1s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB

disk1s2 (disk1s2) <not mounted>: 4 TB

Boot OS X (disk1s3) <not mounted>: 134,2 MB

Hitachi HDE721064SLA360 disk2 : (640,14 GB)

EFI (disk2s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB

Krams (disk2s2) /Volumes/Krams: 639,79 GB (28,69 GB free)

WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0 disk4 : (3 TB)

EFI (disk4s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB

disk4s2 (disk4s2) <not mounted>: 3 TB

Boot OS X (disk4s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series disk0 : (256,06 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB

disk0s2 (disk0s2) <not mounted>: 255,72 GB

Boot OS X (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 134,2 MB

USB Information:

Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub

Mitsumi Electric Apple Optical USB Mouse

Apple, Inc Apple Keyboard

Logitech USB Receiver

Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

Kernel Extensions:

at.obdev.nke.LittleSnitch (4050)

com.Logitech.Control Center.HID

com.avatron.AVExVideo (1.7)

com.manycamllc.driver.ManyCamDriver (0.0.9)

com.Cycling74.driver.Soundflower (1.6.6)

com.avatron.AVExFramebuffer (1.7)

com.taoeffect.ispy.kext (2.0.2)

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] at.obdev.littlesnitchd.plist

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

[loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist

[loaded] com.bjango.istatmenusdaemon.plist

[loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist

[loaded] com.cocoatech.pathfinder.SMFHelper.plist

[loaded] com.cocoatech.pathfinder.SMFHelper6.plist

[loaded] com.cocoatech.pathfinder.SMFHelper7.plist

[loaded] com.ea.origin.ESHelper.plist

[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

[loaded] com.line6.l6ksettingmgr.plist

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

[loaded] com.noatime.root.plist

[loaded] com.quark.quarkupdate.plist

[loaded] com.rogueamoeba.hermes.plist

[loaded] com.stclairsoft.AppTamerAgent.plist

[loaded] com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderXAgent.plist

[loaded] com.taoeffect.ispyd.plist

[loaded] com.timesoftware.timemachineeditor.backup-auto.plist

[loaded] com.timesoftware.timemachineeditor.helper.plist

[loaded] org.cindori.AuthHelper.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.gpgmail.patch-uuid.plist

[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist

Launch Agents:

[loaded] at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent.plist

[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

[loaded] com.adobe.CS4ServiceManager.plist

[loaded] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist

[loaded] com.bjango.istatmenusagent.plist

[not loaded] com.cooliris.SetLaunchArch.plist

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist

[loaded] com.Logitech.Control Center.Daemon.plist

[loaded] com.maintain.CocktailSystemEvents.plist

[loaded] com.srs.EssentialsAgent.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.gpgmail.enable-bundles.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.gpgmail.patch-uuid-user.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.Libmacgpg.xpc.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.macgpg2.fix.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.macgpg2.shutdown-gpg-agent.plist

[loaded] org.gpgtools.macgpg2.updater.plist

[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist

User Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

[failed] com.apple.CSConfigDotMacCert-bogun@me.com-SharedServices.Agent.plist

[loaded] com.ecamm.printopia.plist

[loaded] com.taoeffect.EspionageHelper.plist

[loaded] com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist

[loaded] uk.co.markallan.clamxav.freshclam.plist

[loaded] ws.agile.1PasswordAgent.plist

User Login Items:

VoilaHelper

Default Folder X Helper

GrowlHelperApp

FontAgent Activator

HyperDock Helper

SpamSweep

Meteorologist

Skype

ClamXavSentry

AdobeResourceSynchronizer

ClipMenu

SpeechSynthesisServer

Dropbox

ClamXavSentry

BetterTouchTool

Alfred 2

Air Display Host

My Living Desktop Viewer

TechTool Pro Daemon

3rd Party Preference Panes:

BTTPrefs

Default Folder X

Flash Player

Flip4Mac WMV

FUSE for OS X (OSXFUSE)

GPGPreferences

Growl

HyperDock

Line6AudioMIDI

Logitech Control Center

MediaCentral

Native Instruments USB Audio

Perian

Printopia

Quark Update Preferences

SneakPeek Pro

TechTool Protection

Internet Plug-ins:

AdobeExManDetect.plugin

AdobePDFViewer.plugin

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin

CoolirisWebKitPlugin.plugin

Default Browser.plugin

Flash Player.plugin

FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin

iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin

QuickTime Plugin.plugin

SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin

Silverlight.plugin

SpeedDownload Browser Plugin.plugin

Unity Web Player.plugin

zako.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

None

Time Machine:

Skip System Files: NO

Mobile backups: OFF

Auto backup: NO

Volumes being backed up:

Krams: Disk size: 639,79 GB Disk used: 611,1 GB

Destinations:

Fat Backup [Local] (Last used)

Total size: 4 TB

Total number of backups: 32

Oldest backup: 2013-09-14 21:05:36 +0000

Last backup: 2013-11-15 22:56:17 +0000

Size of backup disk: Excellent

Backup size 4 TB > (Disk size 639,79 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU:

37% Adobe InDesign CS6

8% WindowServer

6% Safari

3% SystemUIServer

2% Little Snitch Agent

2% EtreCheck

2% AdobeAcrobat

2% com.apple.WebKit.Networking

1% Path Finder

1% BetterTouchTool

Top Processes by Memory:

786 MB Adobe InDesign CS6

344 MB mds_stores

344 MB AdobeAcrobat

319 MB com.apple.IconServicesAgent

295 MB Safari

246 MB clamd

246 MB Mail

221 MB iTunes

197 MB WindowServer

172 MB Dock

Virtual Memory Statistics:

11.45 GB Free RAM

7.26 GB Active RAM

3.60 GB Inactive RAM

1.68 GB Wired RAM

4.48 GB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs

(8.89 GB disk cache currently)

I agree with you Drew. Cleaning memory is just a bandaid. It's the only way I can operate my system half-***. Apple is not adressing this so our community must. Please help.

We are trying our best 🙂

Please send a report in, I'm amazed by some of the stuff UliB has installed (& seems happy with), so perhaps I'm off the mark in recommending 'update or remove' to solve this memory issue, but I can't see how it shouldn't help.

You can try reproducing the issue in safe mode…

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

Also disable login items by holding shift after hitting 'login' at the login window.

In theory using both of those should disable all third party items, so if the issue persists it must be the OS.

I'm just not 100% certain if the deprecated /Library/StartupItems are still disabled via this method.

The other option is to go down the boot to recovery, repair disk, repair permissions, repair user permissions (type 'resetpassword' into Terminal in recovery mode to load the GUI tool), reinstall the OS (the default will leave data in place, but 'refresh the OS' files (backup first).

Apple hardware test may indicate any failing RAM modules (hold D @ boot)

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

Snow Leopard was solid!

TheSnapDude wrote:

Snow Leopard was* solid!

^ still is ^

I just wouldn't recommend an upgrade install from 10.6.8 to 10.9 without major cleaning.