Mavericks running out of "Application Memory" with 32 GB of RAM

After reading all these posts, it appears that the app that you are using most is the one that seems to be sucking up all the RAM. Mine just happens to be Firefox. I just updated to 10.9.2 and restarted because Firefox was sucking 10 GB of RAM. After a restart, I sat and watched the Activity Monitor. I had websites up, but was not navigating or using any. I watched the RAM usage skyrocket from 1GB to 7.98 in 10 minutes. I emptied my cache and closing windows didn't slow it down. This just started happening within the past week.

Any suggestions?

Have you read the ArsTechnica article that explains how RAM behaves in 10.9?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5471817?answerId=24014483022#24014483022

How much RAM do you have installed? It could be normal to fill the RAM as the system caches more files and data. If you open another app that wants the RAM the OS should free any stale RAM.

Swap is the one thing you want to avoid, how much 'Swap used' do you have?

What does the memory pressure graph look like - all green or is there any orange or red?

I am joining this discussion after much frustration. Macbook Pro, 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB Memory. Several perhaps related problems since "upgrading" to 10.9.2.

Even with just a few apps running, usually overnight the system shuts down the apps and gives the "running out of application memory" error. Sometimes I can resume the individual applications, most times I am frozen out and can't even force quit. My main issues are around Mail and Spotlight. Spotlight has decided to re-index my hard drive countless times. I thought there was something wrong when I let it run it's full course and it took 8 days to complete the reindexing. I thought I was over it and mail began to respond normally, but the re-inxing started once more. During the indexing Mail slows down and is unuasable. Especially when searching, of course. I used g-mail and have probably tried every suggestion on every Mac user site. Activity monitor shows "distnoted" as the top offender followed by kernel_task and fontd and fontworker.

I'm normally running Firefox, Adobe CS5 apps, Suitcase Fusion 4, plus a few others. I use Onyx for cleaning and probably run disc utility on a command-R startup daily to repair permissions.

I'm not new to Mac's having started in 1988 with a Mac II and have owned most models in-between. Thoughts?

fyavorsky wrote:

Thoughts?

Yes. This thread was started October last year. It has also been marked as solved by the original poster. Try opening your own new thread about your issues, if there is nothing in this resolved thread that helps your situation in anyway.

Pete

I'm running out of application memory as well. I ran EtreCheck and here is the result.

Help Please!

EtreCheck version: 1.9.11 (43) - report generated June 9, 2014 at 2:38:51 PM PDT

Hardware Information:

Mac Pro (Early 2008)

Mac Pro - model: MacPro3,1

2 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPUs: 8 cores

20 GB RAM

Video Information:

ATI Radeon HD 2600 - VRAM: 256 MB

System Software:

OS X 10.9.3 (13D65) - Uptime: 0 days 0:9:36

Disk Information:

WDC WD5000AAKS-41YGA1 disk1 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk1s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

HQ (disk1s2) / [Startup]: 499.25 GB (234.88 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk1s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

WDC WD5000AAKS-41YGA1 disk0 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

eo (disk0s2) /Volumes/eo: 499.76 GB (491.62 GB free)

WDC WD5000AAKS-41YGA1 disk3 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk3s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

BackUp (disk3s2) /Volumes/BackUp: 499.76 GB (5.19 GB free)

WDC WD5000AAKS-41YGA1 disk2 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk2s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

archive (disk2s2) /Volumes/archive: 499.76 GB (479.61 GB free)

USB Information:

Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub

Mitsumi Electric Apple Optical USB Mouse

Apple, Inc Apple Keyboard

Tablet GD-0608-U

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

FireWire Information:

LaCie Group SA LaCie 1394 Disk drive LUN 0 400mbit - 400mbit max

disk4s1 (disk4s1) <not mounted>: 32 KB

disk4s2 (disk4s2) <not mounted>: 66 KB

disk4s3 (disk4s3) <not mounted>: 66 KB

disk4s4 (disk4s4) <not mounted>: 115 KB

LaCie d2 156 GB (disk4s6) /Volumes/LaCie d2 156 GB: 160.04 GB (9.67 GB free)

Gatekeeper:

Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions:

[not loaded] com.heartmath.emWave (1.0.0d2) Support

[not loaded] com.realtek.driver.RTL8187B (1150) Support

[not loaded] com.wacom.kext.wacomtablet (6.1.0) Support

[not loaded] com.xerox.officeprinting.PrinterSpecificMerge (1.3.0) Support

Startup Items:

ProTec6b: Path: /Library/StartupItems/ProTec6b

Launch Daemons:

[running] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist Support

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support

[loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist Support

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

Launch Agents:

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

[running] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist Support

[loaded] com.adobe.CS4ServiceManager.plist Support

[not loaded] com.netgear.wutility Support

[running] com.wacom.wacomtablet.plist Support

User Launch Agents:

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

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

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

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

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

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

User Login Items:

AdobeResourceSynchronizer

MagicMenu

Archive Assistant Scheduler

StuffItAVRDaemon

iTunesHelper

FontAgent Activator

AdobeResourceSynchronizer

Dropbox

Google Drive

Hightail Desktop App

XPSLauncher

Internet Plug-ins:

DirectorShockwave: Version: 11.0.3r472 Support

Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9

AdobeExManDetect: Version: AdobeExManDetect 1.1.0.0 - SDK 10.7 Support

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.4.1.4 Support

OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: Version: 12.3.6 Support

AdobeAAMDetect: Version: AdobeAAMDetect 2.0.0.0 - SDK 10.7 Support

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support

FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support

Silverlight: Version: 4.0.60831.0 Support

Flash Player: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support

iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

AdobeExManCCDetect_x86_64: Version: AdobeExManCCDetect_x86_64 1.0.0.0 - SDK 10.7 Support

AdobePDFViewer: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support

SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.2 - SDK 10.6 Support

WacomSafari: Version: (null) Support

JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 14.9.0 - SDK 10.7 Check version

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9

AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9

iTunes Plug-ins:

Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9

User Internet Plug-ins:

fbplugin_1_0_3: Version: (null) Support

Picasa: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.4 Support

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Déjà Vu Support

Flash Player Support

Flip4Mac WMV Support

FAPPreferences Support

StuffIt AVR Support

WacomTablet Support

Time Machine:

Skip System Files: NO

Auto backup: YES

Volumes being backed up:

HQ: Disk size: 464.96 GB Disk used: 246.22 GB

Destinations:

BackUp [Local] (Last used)

Total size: 465.44 GB

Total number of backups: 103

Oldest backup: 2012-11-20 23:28:32 +0000

Last backup: 2014-06-09 21:15:22 +0000

Size of backup disk: Too small

Backup size 465.44 GB < (Disk used 246.22 GB X 3)

Time Machine details may not be accurate.

All volumes being backed up may not be listed.

Top Processes by CPU:

1% WindowServer

1% sandboxd

1% firefox

0% spindump

0% mds_stores

Top Processes by Memory:

266 MB firefox

143 MB com.apple.IconServicesAgent

102 MB mds_stores

102 MB Creative Cloud

82 MB Dropbox

Virtual Memory Information:

16.82 GB Free RAM

1.58 GB Active RAM

446 MB Inactive RAM

1.15 GB Wired RAM

460 MB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs

Hi Eunice,

It's been some time since I had the same problem and solved it. My iMac was having many issues at the time--the Memory allocation/pressure was one of them. Are you seeing any unusual activity by one app in the Activity Monitor? That was the issue on my system. The pressure was building chronically because of one app--in my case the Apple Calendar. I'd quite the calendar from the Monitor, the pressure would subside, and then the Calendar would start building pressure again, and so forth. So I uninstalled the calendar and then reinstalled it. I recall that fixing this issue.

I solved most of the issues in my older post by doing a complete backup and then a new installation of Mavericks. This was the suggestion from the Apple Tech Support folks.

I just called Apple support and they had me clean out a bunch of system library files. So far it is working. I also turned off time machine and started deleteing old backups to give it a little more space to work in.

I looked at the activity monitor. Nothing jumped out at me but then I'm not certain what I should be looking for!

Oh my, I hope it doesn't come to that!

Batsua,

I see you are running Tripplite's PowerAlert Shutdown under Mavericks. According to Tripp Lite it is only for 10.4 - 10.7 (4 years old).

Does it work under Mavericks? I can't get past the password screen with all of the passwords Tripp Lite's technical support gave me. They really only seem to support PC's.

Any help you can provide in getting this working under Mavricks (and the default password (which is not in the manual)) would be helpful.

Thanks.

Jeffrey