Invisible program eating up memory?

Question

Invisible program eating up memory?

Right now, OS X is telling me that it is using 8GB of memory. As I came from a low memory installation of Debian Linux that normally has a max memory usage of 3-4 GB (even when running Intellij IDEA (the greatest memory hog ever) in the background and playing youtube flash videos at the same time), this is already a bad sign. Since top says (everything in green is my comment):

Processes: 208 total, 2 running, 10 stuck, 196 sleeping, 925 threads 20:12:33

Load Avg: 1.27, 1.37, 1.31 CPU usage: 0.61% user, 0.49% sys, 98.89% idle SharedLibs: 19M resident, 15M data, 0B linkedit. MemRegions: 38205 total, 1910M resident, 81M private, 722M shared.

PhysMem: 8234M used (1547M wired), 8142M unused. VM: 528G vsize, 1063M framework vsize, 298501(0) swapins, 303356(0) swapouts. Networks: packets: 7031548/8051M in, 5825187/4170M out.

Disks: 425119/6842M read, 240264/6333M written. (also an issue, I will post in a separate thread)

I went to Activity monitor to investigate. There, I saw this (hopefully it's not too small):

To hunt for the extra 1 GB, I went to ps. In terminal, ps aux gave me nothing, seeing as everything (but safari) had under 1% RAM, which is obviously not true (yes, everything but safari < 1% RAM, I know my grep (and regex), awk and sort. I come from linux).

Also, what the **** is kernel_task doing with 1.40GB of memory? I've never seen a kernel that needs over a GB of RAM.

To find my invisible program eating up all that memory, I ran AdwareMedic. Nothing. Looking at everything listed in ps. Nothing. As a last resort, I turn to you, Apple Community. Who is eating up 1.4GB of memory without telling me?

If you want my results from EtreCheck, here it is:

EtreCheck version: 2.1.8 (121)

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) (Technical Specifications)

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro11,3

1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4-core

16 GB RAM Not upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported

Wireless: en0: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Battery Health: Normal - Cycle count 21 (yes, this laptop is still new)

System Software:

OS X 10.10.2 (14C109) - Time since boot: 23:15:48

Kernel Extensions:

/Applications/Astrill.app

[not loaded] com.astrill.astrill.kext (1.0) [Click for support]

[loaded] com.astrill.macproxy.kext (2.0.8 - SDK 10.8) [Click for support]

/Applications/Karabiner.app

[loaded] org.pqrs.driver.Karabiner (10.6.0 - SDK 10.10) [Click for support]

Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist [Click for support]

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist [Click for support]

User Login Items:

CheatSheet UNKNOWN (missing value) (Also looking for how to get rid of this)

Flux Application (/Applications/Flux.app)

iTunesHelper Application (/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)

SizeUp Application (/Applications/SizeUp.app)

BetterTouchTool UNKNOWN (missing value) (this too)

Karabiner Application (/Applications/Karabiner.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

JavaAppletPlugin: Version: Java 8 Update 31 Check version

Safari Extensions:

Ghostery

Evernote Web Clipper

Ultimate Status Bar

SafariKeywordSearch

ClickToPlugin

Translate

AdBlock

LastPass

Top Processes by CPU:

4% WindowServer

3% Image Capture Extension (why? you don't need 3% of CPU to do nothing all day)

1% Activity Monitor

1% fontd

0% astrill

Top Processes by Memory:

395 MB Safari

206 MB Finder

137 MB Mail

137 MB WindowServer

137 MB Todoist

Virtual Memory Information:

8.20 GB Free RAM

6.45 GB Active RAM

555 MB Inactive RAM

1.70 GB Wired RAM (where did you come from?)

2.70 GB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs (I would scream if there were page outs with 8GB of free RAM)

Diagnostics Information:

Mar 5, 2015, 08:42:07 PM Self test - passed

Mar 5, 2015, 04:05:18 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/discoveryd_2015-03-05-160518_[redacted].crash

Mar 5, 2015, 02:13:24 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/discoveryd_2015-03-05-021324_[redacted].crash

Mar 4, 2015, 09:03:01 PM /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Mail_2015-03-04-210301_[redact ed].crash

Mar 4, 2015, 08:51:22 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/discoveryd_2015-03-04-205122_[redacted].crash (discoveryd is having a bad day. Any explanations?)

Mar 3, 2015, 09:19:49 PM /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/com.apple.internetaccounts_201 5-03-03-211949_[redacted].crash

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Mar 6, 2015 4:51 AM

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Answer 1

greg sahli

Level 7

25,508 points

Mar 6, 2015 6:43 AM in response to abstruselyarcane

OS X is supposed to maximize use of ram to reduce disk reads.

Other than discoveryd crash (part of Bonjour), do you have any issues/symptoms?

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

141,132 points

Mar 6, 2015 7:11 AM in response to abstruselyarcane

It's normal for Yosemite to use all the RAM available to it. That's due to its dynamic memory compression algorithm. No Linux distro offers anything even remotely like it. If your rMBP had more RAM, Yosemite will greedily take much as it can.

As frustratingly imprecise as it may appear to be from an engineering perspective, the "Memory Pressure" graph really is the only way to determine if a lack of installed memory is limiting your system's performance. The terminology isn't even that objectionable if you consider that it's an indication of memory compression (memory pressure being used in the context of memory compression).

Attempting to justify physical RAM usage by calculating what's using it and what is not will be futile. Page-ins and page-outs aren't very useful either, but if you're seeking some justification for their values you must correlate them to the amount of time since you booted your system since they are cumulative values. Keep your Mac up and running for a month and you'll see many GB used. The "swap used" and compression values in your screenshot are exiguous given the amount of installed RAM.

1.4 GB for kernel_task is not at all unusual.

Put it this way: almost no one knows, or cares, how much RAM their iOS devices have or use, and iOS devices typically have very modest amounts of it. OS X is designed to work the same way, for better or for worse, since Apple has deemed it so — and yes, Yosemite is designed as if everyone's Mac uses flash memory for mass storage just like every iOS device ever sold. Yours obviously does, and it also has an abundant amount of RAM, and as such it's already optimized for Yosemite.

It is a little frustrating since if you had unlimited RAM (or say, 64 GB) OS X will still page out to mass storage at times and for reasons known only to Apple. It's just the way it's built.

tl;dr: don't worry about it.

discoveryd has a few problems. We are all patiently waiting for Apple to fix them, and there isn't anything else we can do about that.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2015 7:59 AM in response to greg sahli

There are extra issues, namely with OS X's obsession of writing to the disk. I have posted it in a separate thread here.

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Answer 4

BobHarris

Level 9

53,117 points

Mar 6, 2015 1:59 PM in response to abstruselyarcane

Also, what ... is kernel_task doing with 1.40GB of memory? I've never seen a kernel that needs over a GB of RAM.

The kernel_task uses memory proportional to the amount of physical RAM. Your usage is in line with the amount of RAM you are using.

My 16GB Macbook Pro is currently using 1.11GB. In the past I've seen 1.25GB. From observing lots of posts that include kernel_task memory usage, the approx 900MB to 1.25GB of is typical.

Users with 8GB has a proportional smaller amount. 4GB users again a proportional smaller value. I have not seen too many kernel_task sizes for 32GB systems, but again they did seem to be proportionally higher.

I am fairly sure that Mac OS X is maintaining virtual memory page tables in this space. It is the only explanation that fits the proportional kernel_task memory usage to amount of RAM in the system.

Anyway, if your kernel_task memory usage grows way beyond your current usage (like greater than 2GB, then chances are one of your 3rd party kernel extensions has a memory leak, or is just a pig). Your system has a surprising few 3rd party additions, and they all seem to be well behaved.

Finally, a computer that does not try to use ALL your RAM for caches, and anything else it can cram in memory is wasting the money you paid for your RAM. Mac OS X does a very good job of giving your value for your RAM.

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Answer 5

John Galt

Level 10

141,132 points

Mar 6, 2015 2:17 PM in response to BobHarris

BobHarris wrote:

... I have not seen too many kernel_task sizes for 32GB systems, but again they did seem to be proportionally higher.

As luck would have it I happen to be using a Mac with 32GB at the moment:

If memory serves I have never seen anything greatly in excess of that, no matter what I'm doing with the Mac.

FWIW.

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