kernel_task high memory usage

Can you tell what the temp of you CPU and hard drive are?

Same problem for me.

I've got an iMac 2011, with 12GB RAM.

Yesterday upgrade from ML to Mavericks, and today the memory used grows and slows down all the system, because swap are in use.

the process responsible of that is kernel_task, who grows in memory a lot (all ram + 1-10GB swap).

it persist about 10-20 minuts, then all goes well, and another time grows, and so on...

It makes the work too hard and slow.

reboot my computer doesn't solve the problem, it persist... 😟

I have the same problem. Before the upgrade to Mavericks I could work all day doing what I call "normal" work and rarely have paging problems. When I did it was usually because I had multiple tabs open in Safari to Flash heavy websites. Perhaps once per week I would need to close Safari, use the "purge" command and my system would be good as new.

With Mavericks I can do "normal" work for about 5-6 hours then I'm paging like crazy. I'm even more careful than before to close apps I'm not using, but I still seem to max out my RAM. The "purge" command does not free up as much RAM as it used to and I'm forced to reboot.

Now I feel like a PC user, needing to reboot my Mac every day just to keep it working right. :-(

In 10.9 I've noticed massive issues with Flash Player in Chrome and Firefox, as soon as you play a video, you're looking at 80+% CPU use and often lots of RAM as well. Safari spikes a little here and there as well, however it seems to be optimized in some way to be more forgiving. This is incredibly annoying though since I'm not too keen on Safari at all, ***** to have to use it to play video.

IMO this more about Mavericks being unpatched and less about anything else right now. 'S what you get for updating to a new OS early into it's dev cycle. It's possible that a browser update or Flash Player update in the near future might help as well, but I wouldn't hold my breath. FF25 just came out and it's still bad as ever on there. Will see if any new Flash Player updates make the difference..

kernal_task using a lot of RAM and slowly keeps using more.

restart does not solve for me.

every couple hours i free memory with free memory app.

in the time it took to type this the process has consumed another 30 MB

All of you should take a closer look in Activity Monitor. If swap used is 0, there is probably nothing wrong. It may be that the extra RAM used is storing the compressed RAM, and that would be as designed.

But that would be different than the cases where swap files are numerous and large. In those cases there would be a concern if it was constantly happening, especially when a lot of RAM is installed.

Perhaps for KnowledgeIsPower2 those issues should be addressed, but this is certainly a deeper OS issue. I have neither of Kernel Extensions and my Mac exhibits the same paging symptoms. At least it's predicable and fixed with a reboot. I just though I left those days behind me when I got rid of my PC's.

Hello Guys,

I've just restarted my MBP 2011, 13'' with 8GB Ram, updated from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, and "kernel_task" in few minutes is growing up to 1GB and has activated more then 100 Threads... I think there is something wrong with memory and CPU usage of this new implementation.

Is there any update about this issue or any fix?

Thanks

You may be confusing Library folders. The one you found sounds like the User Library. This is the one the Go menu takes you to. The one you want is the System Library. You have to go to the root level, which you can get to by double-clicking the HD icon on your desktop, go to Macintosh HD (or whatever you've named the HD icon), then to the System folder (marked with the X icon). The Library folder you need is in there, and the Extensions folder is in that, with all the .kext files. Spotlight doesn't show these, which may be why you're not finding them.

Be very careful, though. You need to be hyper-cautious about touching anything in the System folder, as the running of your Mac depends on it. But the Extensions folder must be there, or your Mac wouldn't be working.

You have two ways to access the directory:

• In Finder:
  1. Goto: Macintosh HD (if not visible, type: ⇧⌘C)
  2. Then, System → Library → Extensions
• In Terminal:

  Type:

  cd /System/Library/Extensions
  

  Notice: using lower case may work in OSX, but in other BSD kernels library and file names are case sensitive

Same issue here. Since upgrading to Mavericks my machine is very unresponsive. Activity Monitor shows kernel_task at top of CPU and memory tabs.

The suggested solution is to delete older .kext files in System/Library/Extensions and reboot. Keep trying until your system speeds up.

Not a great solution really. I have 243 kext files in that folder. Do I delete them one at a time? If I break something by deleting a kext, is there anyway to revert?

No input from Apple suport team?

Just to let you know cad613, for reasons of my own, I decided to clean and reinstall on my MBP. It didn't change anything. Initially there was no kernel_task, but as I worked with my Mac to download a few apps it popped up. What is interesting is that there appears to be a lag in resetting the memory. I was doing an online photography course that included using Lightroom 5. On several occasions the instructor noted that his computer was lagging just like mine started to do as of late. This was about 2 weeks ago around the time of the upgrade. I would suspect that we have pinned this as the problem, but it would appear it may not be. Lightroom can be a very intensive app, but my mac would reset itself as it got low in memory but now it doesn't. I need to have an app that will manually clear memory. Do I think that it is Mavericks, yes, but whatever it is seems to be a mystery.

I did the clean and reinstall for the same reason that you stated. When I got the MBP I just did a backup transferred from my last MacBook and there were definitely remnants of stuff that were annoying and did not run properly. Rather then try to find all the crap that comes alone with the apps. which would have consumed copious amounts of time, I just cleaned. But it comes along with other tasks like reinstalling important software.

Sometimes I feel like I am working with the 'other OS'. Just one good thing is that if there is a problem, I am sure it will be found.

800MB is within bounds for a 16GB system. Since you have kernel extensions installed (McAfee, and maybe others), going o 1.2GB can be a very normal situation.

Since this thread is already 7 pages long _AND_ marked "Answered", you might consider starting a new thread to discuss your issues.

In your new thread, if you wish to point to anything you think is relevant in this thread just provide a link, but since many kernel_task too large all have different situations, it is unlikely.

In your new thread, please post the output from EtreCheck

<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6174>

<http://etrecheck.com>

Perform the EtreCheck "When" you have a large kernel_task memory usage, otherwise, there is no point to it if large kernel_task memory using is the problem.

And I can tell you, you will be told to remove McAfee, and any Mac clearners, or memory cleaners.

<http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg-builtin/>

Finally since you are running Yosemite, post your new thread in the Yosemite forum, not the Mavericks forum.

marc_l wrote:

This doesn't work because the system won't let me move the files, only copy them. When I try to delete the files after copying them, I get a message saying they can't be deleted because the files are being used by OS X.

If you cannot move the files, chances are you are NOT using Mavericks. You should be posting in the forum related to your specific operating system release.

You should give as much details as you can.

It would be nice in your new "Post" to include the EtreCheck output

<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6174> or <http://etrecheck.com>

I found this video on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkxC9SUSw00

anybody that can tell if it can work this way?