Q: Mac slow after Yosemite 10.10.1 up-grade - kernel task?
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Dec 22, 2014 5:08 AMby benwiggy,OS X is designed to use up your RAM. This is a good thing. Having lots of free RAM is not indicative of a healthy system. A large kernel_task process is to be expected. 500MB is actually pretty light.
Have you checked the hard drive? A 4-year-old drive is on its last legs. You might want to consider getting an SSD to replace the drive. That will make your machine significantly faster.
Alternatively, make sure you haven't got any third-party system extensions that haven't been updated for Yosemite.
For slowness, check CPU in Activity Monitor, not memory.
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Dec 22, 2014 5:57 AMby sageonthehill,Thanks!
I doubt it's the hard drive though. I have 62 of 320 GB available. The system performance was ok before the update to 10.10.1 from 10.10, so if the HD would be the root cause, I should have had similar problems before I guess.
Meanwhile I noticed in the Console this line:
kernel[0]: BUG in process suhelperd[197]: over-released legacy external boost assertions (1 total, 1 external, 0 legacy-external)
which seems to be a Yosemite bug reported by many others leading to slow speed with apparently no solution, yet
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Dec 22, 2014 6:19 AMby BobHarris,If you have 3rd party additions, that may have worked in older Mac OS X versions, they may not be working well in Yosemite.
Try posting the EtreCheck output
<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6174>
Which will list the additions, and someone will help identify known trouble makers.
You might also look in your Applications -> Utilities -> Console at the logs to see if there are frequently repeating entries. A frequently repeating entry is often a sign that something is having problems in the current OS release.
In Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor if the Memory Pressure indicator is yellow or red, that is a sign the software you have been using (apps or 3rd party extensions, launch daemons & agents, startup items, login items, etc... may be consuming too much RAM and either there is a problem with the software, or you need to try doing fewer things at once, or maybe get more RAM.
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Dec 22, 2014 6:20 AMby benwiggy,sageonthehill wrote:
I doubt it's the hard drive though. I have 62 of 320 GB available.
A drive can had bad sectors, become corrupted, or just get plain cranky, all before failing entirely. The free space left is no indication of quality.
Having said that: 62GB left on a 320GB drive is pretty small, and that in itself may be a performance factor.
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Dec 22, 2014 9:46 AMby sageonthehill,BobHarris wrote:
...
You might also look in your Applications -> Utilities -> Console at the logs to see if there are frequently repeating entries. A frequently repeating entry is often a sign that something is having problems in the current OS release.
Thanks, Bob!
As mentioned above, the biggest issue in the log seems to be
22/12/2014 18:20:33.000 kernel[0]: BUG in process suhelperd[174]: over-released legacy external boost assertions (1 total, 1 external, 0 legacy-external)
running across a couple of pages! Apart from this, there are many other entries which seem weird to a rookie like me, however, I probably should not paste all this here... There are a number related to
com.apple.xpc.launchd
WindowServer
and
22/12/2014 18:21:11.000 kernel[0]: Sandbox: appleeventsd(25) deny file-read-metadata /Library
If anyone can help, I'll be happy to post more details from the log, but not sure which
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Dec 22, 2014 10:26 AMby BobHarris,suhelperd has been seen a lot (according to a Google search). It seems to be the Software Update Helper, so it has been suggested turning off automatic software update checking or reducing the interval may reduce the number of errors seen.
However, I do not think suhelperd is the cause of your slow downs. I would suggest posting the EtreCheck output
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by Linc Davis,Dec 22, 2014 11:44 AM
Linc Davis
Dec 22, 2014 11:44 AM
in response to sageonthehill
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