taskgated keeps growing and eats up all of memory

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Level 3

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taskgated keeps growing and eats up all of memory

I am running Yosemite (10.10.2) on a late 2009 Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM. I keep it running to act like a music server in the house. It also runs SpamSieve to check my email.

Every once in a while, I notice that the Finder complains about running out of memory. I check the Activity Monitor and taskgated is using 5.8GB of the memory. I reboot and it is gone. Then about 2 weeks later it repeats, In the last hour it has gone from 798MB to 1.06GB.

I am also running an app called "Showtape" that I use to record shows off the Internet.

My questions are: What is taskgated and what is causing it to use so much memory?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.5), MId 2011 Version

Posted on Mar 1, 2015 11:25 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Mar 1, 2015 11:33 AM in response to Gerry Brown

From the Unix man:

DESCRIPTION

taskgated is a system daemon that implements a policy for the task_for_pid

system service. When the kernel is asked for the task port of a process,

and preliminary access control checks pass, it invokes this daemon (via

launchd) to make the decision.

You might try quitting each running application, one at a time, until the memory is released in order to find what is using it. May likely be Showtape?

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Answer 2

Gerry Brown Author

Level 3

795 points

Mar 1, 2015 11:38 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks Kappy. Showtape is recording right now (which may be why it is increasing - now at 1.25GB). The man doesn't help me. Can you explain what it does? And why would it increase memory usage? Is this a "retain" issue?

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Mar 1, 2015 11:42 AM in response to Gerry Brown

Frankly, I haven't a clue. 😁

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Answer 4

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Mar 1, 2015 11:49 AM in response to Gerry Brown

"Snowtape" (not "Showtape") has been reported by others to cause this problem. Either get rid of it or refer to its developer for support.

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Answer 5

Gerry Brown Author

Level 3

795 points

Mar 1, 2015 12:25 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks, Linc. You are right about "Snowcap" (not Showtape), sorry! And thanks for the info.

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Answer 6

Gerry Brown Author

Level 3

795 points

Mar 1, 2015 4:03 PM in response to Gerry Brown

I reported this issue to vemedio.com.

I also modified the launchdaemon for taskgated and added the parameter "-t 180". It is in the file "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.taskgated.plist". WARNING: This is a core system file. Editing the file can cause your system to be not work. Modifying the file at your own risk.

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