Tagged Questions

0
votes
0answers
33 views

Increase swap size limit past 59GB

I'm running some very memory intensive code on Mountain Lion (16GB Memory + 0.5TB of SSD). I've noticed that once the swap file reaches 59GB, it stops increasing, and my code is basically dead in the ...
1
vote
1answer
233 views

Mac virtual memory: how to make OS X create swap (page) files as freely with a normal boot as it does with a safe boot (swapfile1 etc)

Background When my MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory boots in safe mode I see that the operating system causes dynamic_pager(8) to create swap files in a way that's relatively unrestrained. In the file ...
3
votes
1answer
154 views

find what's producing inactive memory

First of all i'd like to ask politely for all of those who feel the need to explain it to me how perfect apple's memory management is to ignore this thread. A little background: The theory goes that ...
7
votes
3answers
2k views

How does memory management work in Mac OS X?

I am a university student who has been trying to write a compare and contrast paper between how Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X manage memory. For instance, with Windows, it's physical memory (RAM) and ...
2
votes
1answer
914 views

How to reduce the size of swap files (Mac OS 10.6) \

I recently deleted (Oops!) my swap files and thanks to some great help on this forum, I was able to re-start my Mac and there is now a new swap folder. I had used Grand Perspectives in an attempt to ...
3
votes
1answer
778 views

Oops — deleted swap files (Mac OS, 10.6) — will they come back?

I'm worse than my grandmother when it comes to computers. So I got a Mac as my friends who know me and know a bit about PCs said I'd fair better with a Mac. They were right and I love my Mac Book ...
3
votes
1answer
2k views

Is there a way to limit the size of the disk swap file in Mac OS X?

It seems to be that in OS X, whenever you are out of ram the system happily swaps to disk. This easily becomes an disaster due to the fact that the swapped out memory eventually fills my drive. On my ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views

Disable inactive memory swapping

Background: OSX keeps some information in RAM that is no longer used, but was recently used. This is called inactive memory, and is intended to improve user experience by speeding up some actions: ...
7
votes
1answer
945 views

Why is it that my Mac would rather swap than clear inactive memory?

Why is it that my Mac would rather swap than clear inactive memory? I know people say that the Mac OS manages itself and whatever, but there is a serious performance dip when my MacBook starts ...
5
votes
3answers
712 views

Is it possible to use a SD card as virtual memory in OS X Server?

I have a 8gb High Performance SD card that I would like to use as swap (virtual memory). Is this possible in Mac OS X Server, and if so how do I go about doing this?
2
votes
1answer
197 views

If a Mac has 1GB inactive, and it has been idle for an hour, why it doesn't swap the inactive RAM to the pagefile for “readiness”?

I am sure Apple engineers have thought of and decided not to do it -- if from the Activity Monitor, I see out of the 4GB of total RAM, 1GB is not active, and the Mac has been idle for 1 or 2 hours, ...
3
votes
1answer
890 views

Any performance gains when disabling secure virtual memory?

To disable secure virtual memory in 10.7, one does the following: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.virtualMemory DisableEncryptedSwap -boolean yes However, are there any benefits ...
2
votes
1answer
2k views

VM size in Activity Monitor: hundreds of GB?

When I open the Activity Monitor, I get something looking like this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342. But why the heck is "VM size" around 100-200 GB?? Here is the capture from the apple support: ...
0
votes
1answer
47 views

Are the per process memory and other statistics defined the same as the system wide stats?

There's been a lot of posts about memory in OSX. None have really documented what the screen below speaks to. Especially the difference between private memory, and virtual private memory. Also does ...
0
votes
2answers
110 views

why my Mac disk size become zero while Mac running long time?

While my my Mac starts, it shows about 2GB free size but after running about 5-6 hours, I use Firefox and other apps at that time, then only leave the FF running (not close), other apps also in stop ...
1
vote
2answers
404 views

Why is my memory still inactive after purging?

I'm trying to understand how memory is allocated on my machine. I have read, and believe I understand, these posts and associated links: Trouble Understanding Inactive Memory in MacOSX, Inactive ...
7
votes
2answers
274 views

How can I diagnose really poor performance of my 13" MBP 2011 on 10.6?

The specs are: 2011 MBP 13" Core i7 4Gb RAM 320Gb HDD (not SSD) I use the system for work everyday, I almost always run the following: Mail.app Chrome (7-10 tabs) Terminal (2-3 sessions) Skype ...
28
votes
12answers
17k views

Why would I disable swap file in Mac OS X?

I came across a thread about installing an SSD drive in MacBook Pro. Someone in the comments also recommended to disable the swap file but didn't say why: sudo launchctl unload -w ...
5
votes
4answers
13k views

Startup disk has no more space available for application memory?

I purchased a new Macbook Pro (8,3) last April, and have been using it heavily for xcode development, and little else. This morning a message popped up: "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space ...
6
votes
2answers
669 views

Trouble Understanding Inactive Memory in MacOSX

I thought that I understood how MacOSX manages memory, but recently I’ve become baffled by its performance. Here is the situation: I have a brand new Core i7 system with 8GB of physical memory ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views

Is there a way to reduce the swappiness of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

I have 6GB on my old Macbook, with an SSD. I would like to avoid writing to the swap file as much as possible. Ever since my upgrade, I have always had at least 1 to 1.5GB memory "free". Yet, I ...
2
votes
2answers
204 views

Caffeine taking up 2.88GB virtual memory

Caffeine is a small program. Why is it taking up so much virtual memory or am I reading this wrong? Edit: persists across application and os restarts
13
votes
4answers
5k views

What does it mean if I have lots of “Inactive” memory at the end of a work day?

After a day's of work at my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.5, Activity Monitor shows that the majority of my computer's 8 GB of memory is "Inactive", and only a tiny sliver of the pie chart is ...
5
votes
3answers
1k views

MacBook Running Really Slow, Activity Monitor Reports HUGE VM

My MacBook is running really really slow at the moment, I have quit loads of processes (but activity monitor only reported about 10% cpu usage anyway). I had just noticed I have a VM Size of 250GB! ...
9
votes
3answers
8k views

How can I move virtual memory swap files to a different drive or partition?

note: This is a question that I asked on SuperUser a while ago. I'm re-posting it here because I think it belongs here. By default, Mac OS X stores its swap files in /private/var/vm/. I would like to ...