Mavericks and memory (Ram)

UliB wrote:

* Please do not debug * ;-)

Sorry, I can't help myself. I wasn't really looking for anything, but spotted a couple.

You've got ClamXavSentry in your Login Items twice. I know it is possible to have two running simultaneously (as I somehow launched it twice and it wasn't a good thing).

I also saw Perian, which several users have reported as broken and no longer supported.

Might want to run all that throug RoaringApps when you get time.

Tomna8r wrote:

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 have read through your post a few times now Tomna8r, and I'm unsure what I'm missing. I realize you must be experiencing slowdowns, but I'm unclear if it is RAM related.

Time Machine will be slow for a while because of all the system changes etc, as will Spotlight & other caches.

The OS now uses memory compression, so the available RAM is somewhat irrelevant. Have you looked at the disk load & CPU when the slowdowns occur?

I'm not trying to dispute the issue, I just think what is described doesn't necessarily mean memory is the culprit.

How much compressed memory do you see? Do you get swap usage?

Here is the best explanation I have seen…

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/#compressed-memory

It's probably just repetition, tell me to go away if none of this is helping.

MadMacs0 wrote:

You've got ClamXavSentry in your Login Items twice. I know it is possible to have two running simultaneously (as I somehow launched it twice and it wasn't a good thing).

I also saw Perian, which several users have reported as broken and no longer supported.

Now this is really interesting, because I cleaned my log-in items about two weeks ago. Only one ClamXavSentry at that time. (But while this is not really clean, only one of them in Activity Monitor.) And I had not realized about Perian’s end of life.

Maybe I should modify the line:

*Feel free to debug*

*But keep in mind this Mac is working flawlessly*

😉

Thanks, MadMacs0!

I have the exact same problem with the current Mini at my office. When Safari is running, within 10 minutes it will take up all the memory and almost peg the CPU. Everything will slow to a crawl eventually, and when I close Safari, things go back to normal. This does not happen on the iMac here at home, though, so it seems to be a problem with certain machines. I've gone off & left Safari running on the Mini overnight on several occasions, thinking it might be an indexing thing, but things are still the same the next morning. I have no clue.

ggore wrote:

I have the exact same problem with the current Mini at my office. When Safari is running, within 10 minutes it will take up all the memory and almost peg the CPU.

Make sure the Flash plug-in is updated.

Also, as a test, disable JavaScript in the Security preferences. If that reduces the load, it may be Flash that is causing it. If you leave pages open that are refreshing Flash ads, they can chew up memory fast.

Yep, check all the other plugins too.

EtreCheck is a quick way to see them all…

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck look in the Internet Plugins section.

They are all stored in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ and ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ (your user library ~/Library is hidden so use the Finders "Go menu > Go to Folder…" to open it).

It's also worth looking at any Safari extensions, see the Safari prefs & update any old ones.

Thank you RadovanZavodsky for sharing Memory Clean...certainly a good temporary solution especially been in the menu bar providing a visual clue. I think it complements Mavericks nicely and works for me.

Are you seeing a figure for 'Swap used' in Activity monitor, if so how much?

Hehe UliB,

The kexts & old type startupitems caught my eye.

You probably want to clear out the failed user launchd job too & update all thos apps running as background tasks, why isn't your Mac on fire already? 😀

Drew Reece wrote:

You probably want to clear out the failed user launchd job too

Yes, I did so! Nice tool, and thanks for the hints!

update all thos apps running as background tasks, why isn't your Mac on fire already? 😀

Well it is.It’s blazing fast since the upgrade to 10.9 😉

Just for anyones information, I was using a memory cleaner and when I updated to Mavericks my IMAC with 4gb of memory was slow, hung at times, and I was close to going back to Lion but decided to check online to see what might be done. After reading an article about how Mavericks would handle memory better than any previous OS I decided that I wouldn't need the memory cleaner. As soon as it was disabled everything changed, the OS is fast, have had no problems to speak of other than losing a few apps which won't run.

dgfred wrote:

After reading an article about how Mavericks would handle memory better than any previous OS I decided that I wouldn't need the memory cleaner. As soon as it was disabled everything changed, the OS is fast, have had no problems to speak of other than losing a few apps which won't run.

Thanks for relating your first hand experience. I posted some cautions earlier and was about to try some tests myself to see if that was the case.

I really don't think any of us can rely on previous OS experience to judge how it works now in Mavericks.

What memory cleaner app were you using?

I switched Java Script off and installed the latest Flash player. Of course, that disables Apple's website, so I had to turn it back on for a while. Safari sat unused and minimized and there were no ill effects today, memory-use-wise. Maybe I've solved the problem, I hope so. Thanks much for the help.

App nap is a new feature that suspends app processing if the windows are hidden. Your test didn't take that into account 🙂

Safari even stops processing pages if you cover the window with another app.

Update your plugins & Safari extensions is my advice.

If it seems that Flash is eating memory, I would suggest a Safari extension like ClickToFlash or ClickToPlugin. It blocks Flash content from running unless you click on it.

You can configure it to allow the content to run based on the website domain.