How to free up virtual memory?

Barry Margolin wrote in message ...
> ps -axww -o vsz,command | sort -n

Hi Barry,

Thanks for your help. When I type in this command, is the first column
the memory usage? Because all values I get are close to 600000 - not a
lot in bytes, and too much in kilobytes (0,6MB for the former and
600MB for the latter).

Helge

Hi,

<< If you quit some of those programs, you should
free up lots of VM. >>

The important operative words here are 'should' and 'lots'. On my machine
(Powerbook G3 upgraded to Sonnet G4, 500 MHz, 288 MB RAM) neither seems to work
very well with PS CS.

Best,

Conrad


Conrad Weiler
Camp Sherman, Oregon

In article ,
helge RemoveThis @mailinator.com (Helge) wrote:

> Barry Margolin wrote in message
> ...
> > ps -axww -o vsz,command | sort -n
>
> Hi Barry,
>
> Thanks for your help. When I type in this command, is the first column
> the memory usage? Because all values I get are close to 600000 - not a
> lot in bytes, and too much in kilobytes (0,6MB for the former and
> 600MB for the latter).

It's the memory usage in kilobytes. BTW, I now suggest changing
"command" to "ucomm", which gives just the program name without the long
path or arguments. When I do this, the last few lines are:

133444 Dock
133556 WindowServer
142468 SystemUIServer
145100 Terminal
152732 Finder
174732 Mail
196192 LaunchCFMApp
201564 Safari
1193204 TruBlueEnvironme

TruBlueEnvironme is the internal name of "Classic".

If you're seeing lots of 600MB processes, that would explain why you're
running out of VM.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar RemoveThis @alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

Barry Margolin wrote in message ...
> It's the memory usage in kilobytes.
> (...)
> If you're seeing lots of 600MB processes, that would explain why you're
> running out of VM.

Hi Barry,

indeed, virtually every process takes 600MB on my machine. Here is a
dump (with "ps -axww -o vsz,ucomm | sort -n") right after starting the
machine up:

VSZ UCOMM
8816 sort
18056 update
18072 init
18080 dynamic_pager
18092 syslogd
18104 ps
18112 rpc.lockd
18320 ntpd
18604 mach_init
18676 notifyd
20120 nfsiod
22652 tcsh
27328 crashreporterd
27340 KernelEventAgent
27480 netinfod
27612 cron
27752 distnoted
27880 diskarbitrationd
27904 aped
27968 mDNSResponder
28104 fix_prebinding
28896 SecurityServer
28976 automount
29176 lookupd
29340 kextd
30136 configd
30268 automount
34256 cupsd
35108 coreservicesd
36368 DirectoryService
45656 pbs
62468 ATSServer
64184 loginwindow
589696 wsxd
599872 ASM_Controller
600200 SpeechSynthesisS
604708 Dock
605176 YKBackgrounder
606580 Youpi Key
607040 WindowServer
610556 ProcessWizard
610968 LittleSnitchDaem
614272 Terminal
616132 SystemUIServer
623552 Finder
642932 Safari
674124 Mail
1126184 TruBlueEnvironme

I think is pretty strange that the dock and the finder, which take
100MB on your machine, suddenly take 600MB on my machine, don't you
think? My System is 10.3.1, but I had this problem (vm used up
quickly) since I remember using OS X the first time (10.2).

Are you sure the numbers we see is *used* memory? Is looks a lot more
like *allocated, but not yet used* memory to me. I mean, with these
numbers even 3 Gig of free harddisk would not be enough, wouldn't it?

Cheers!

In article ,
helge.DeleteThis@mailinator.com (Helge) wrote:

> I think is pretty strange that the dock and the finder, which take
> 100MB on your machine, suddenly take 600MB on my machine, don't you
> think? My System is 10.3.1, but I had this problem (vm used up
> quickly) since I remember using OS X the first time (10.2).

How long has your system been up? I just rebooted on Saturday. Many
programs tend to grow over time.

> Are you sure the numbers we see is *used* memory? Is looks a lot more
> like *allocated, but not yet used* memory to me. I mean, with these
> numbers even 3 Gig of free harddisk would not be enough, wouldn't it?

It could be allocated but not used memory in some cases; the OS may use
"lazy swap allocation". However, it's very unusual for applications to
allocate such huge amounts of memory without using it, and I don't
understand why they would do so on your system but not mine. I can't
imagine what would make your Dock process 5 times larger than mine.

I'm running 10.3.2, but I find it difficult to believe that this much of
a change could have happened in a minor release.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar.DeleteThis@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

622192 Console
623116 SecurityAgent
624448 LittleSnitchDaem
624676 PPP Genie
626312 LaunchCFMApp
629556 Dock
631148 Terminal
650012 Finder
668192 LaunchCFMApp
725812 Window Manager
732244 mozilla-bin
is from this system running 10.2.8

there seem to be 3 swap files, each of 76.2 Mb, so it can't that each of
thse programs has 600Mb of memory, er... I think. Unless there's some
other swapfile called something else?

> Are you sure the numbers we see is *used* memory? Is looks a lot more
> like *allocated, but not yet used* memory to me. I mean, with these
> numbers even 3 Gig of free harddisk would not be enough, wouldn't it?
>
> Cheers!

Terminal using the same amount of memory as Finder? Does multithreading
mean they can all have a big chunk but not if they have it all at the
same time? And weren't banks one of the first people to make automated
accounting systems? It's just a system implementation of fractional
reserve lending. Well in an OS its fine but in a global banking system
its the biggest scam of all time. I knew I went into the wrong business.

Andy

Ps for a good description of the fractional reserve lending scam we're
all part of, see

http://www.nick2211.yage.net/chips.htm

i'm watching this thread from a linux box ... it seems quite a puzzle.

i wonder what it looks like if you run "top" and then type an upper case
"M" to sort by memory usage?

you should see something like:

17:33:41 up 5:35, 2 users, load average: 0.15, 0.13, 0.19
67 processes: 66 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait idle
total 9.2% 0.0% 2.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 188.2%
cpu00 5.7% 0.0% 1.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 92.6%
cpu01 3.5% 0.0% 0.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 95.6%
Mem: 514000k av, 339396k used, 174604k free, 0k shrd, 42336k buff
86640k active, 224048k inactive
Swap: 1044184k av, 0k used, 1044184k free 151280k cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
1378 root 15 0 101M 37M 6048 S 7.9 7.5 45:27 1 X
2252 redacted 16 0 30300 29M 15524 S 0.0 5.8 0:14 1 mozilla-bin
1445 redacted 16 0 22996 22M 2004 S 0.0 4.4 0:01 0 gconfd-2
1516 redacted 16 0 17264 16M 9932 S 0.0 3.3 0:04 0 nautilus
2235 redacted 15 0 16824 16M 9476 S 0.1 3.2 0:10 0 pan
1526 redacted 25 10 16744 16M 9452 S N 0.0 3.2 0:16 0 rhn-applet-gui
1522 redacted 15 0 11480 11M 7632 S 3.1 2.2 0:11 1 gnome-terminal
1518 redacted 16 0 10660 10M 8228 S 0.0 2.0 0:04 0 gnome-panel
1388 redacted 16 0 8964 8964 6560 S 0.0 1.7 0:01 0 gnome-session
1579 redacted 15 0 8940 8940 7000 S 0.0 1.7 0:07 0 wnck-applet
1512 redacted 15 0 7144 7144 5880 S 0.3 1.3 0:27 1 metacity
1572 redacted 15 0 6800 6800 5800 S 0.0 1.3 0:03 0 mixer_applet2
1451 redacted 16 0 6656 6656 5368 S 0.0 1.2 0:00 0 gnome-settings-
1520 redacted 16 0 6592 6592 5676 S 0.0 1.2 0:00 0 eggcups

btw, you should also be able to use the "vmstat" command to see how
extensively your system is swapping at any given time.

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:12:18 -0800,
lefty (lefty@newbox.invalid) wrote:
> i'm watching this thread from a linux box ... it seems quite a puzzle.
>
> i wonder what it looks like if you run "top" and then type an upper case
> "M" to sort by memory usage?

Won't work on OS X. The equivalent command is `top -o vsize`.

> btw, you should also be able to use the "vmstat" command to see how
> extensively your system is swapping at any given time.

`vmstat` also doesn't exist in OS X.

--
Bev A. Kupf
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne" -- Chaucer
Stripes - Martha Stewart's new Spring collection

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 02:27:37 +0000, Bev A. Kupf wrote:

> On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:12:18 -0800,
> lefty (lefty@newbox.invalid) wrote:
>> i'm watching this thread from a linux box ... it seems quite a puzzle.
>>
>> i wonder what it looks like if you run "top" and then type an upper
>> case "M" to sort by memory usage?
>
> Won't work on OS X. The equivalent command is `top -o vsize`.
>
>> btw, you should also be able to use the "vmstat" command to see how
>> extensively your system is swapping at any given time.
>
> `vmstat` also doesn't exist in OS X.

ooops , i got optimistic since that long ps line you guys have been
quoting works for me. i thought we were converging maybe more than we
are.

"Bev A. Kupf" wrote in message ...
> On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:12:18 -0800,
> lefty (lefty@newbox.invalid) wrote:
> > i wonder what it looks like if you run "top" and then type an upper case
> > "M" to sort by memory usage?
>
> Won't work on OS X. The equivalent command is `top -o vsize`.

Here are my "top -o vsize" results:


Processes: 62 total, 3 running, 59 sleeping... 229 threads
10:33:19
Load Avg: 0.78, 1.51, 1.12 CPU usage: 37.4% user, 21.4% sys,
41.3% idle
SharedLibs: num = 112, resident = 31.1M code, 2.46M data, 8.62M
LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 8342, resident = 225M + 25.3M private, 193M
shared
PhysMem: 68.1M wired, 374M active, 188M inactive, 631M used, 8.61M
free
VM: 5.67G + 80.6M 65962(0) pageins, 19839(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE
VSIZE
381 TruBlueEnv 7.6% 34:13.52 14 214 352 44.0M 25.0M 61.0M
1.08G
0 kernel_tas 0.0% 7:44.82 35 2 130 888K 0K 54.4M
532M
427 Safari 0.6% 60:39.12 19 492 869 74.5M 41.8M 113M
432M
349 Finder 0.0% 3:29.84 4 213 373 8.58M 26.3M 37.5M
146M
874 Mail 0.0% 0:18.20 9 139 244 6.39M 18.4M 35.5M
145M
881 Microsoft 0.0% 0:05.35 6 95 240 10.4M 25.9M 35.9M
143M
193 WindowServ 2.0% 21:54.38 3 372 717 13.4M 58.1M 43.5M
137M
891 Microsoft 0.0% 0:03.89 3 70 215 6.64M 30.1M 29.9M
135M
195 ATSServer 0.0% 0:18.85 2 89 289 940K 14.5M 7.52M
118M
879 Internet E 0.6% 0:09.75 5 88 202 5.33M 17.3M 28.3M
113M
796 mplayer 0.0% 2:01.95 4 179 129 1.28M 23.5M 31.0M
111M
878 Camino 0.0% 0:04.19 7 106 245 5.46M 20.8M 31.7M
111M
880 Transmit 0.0% 0:03.16 4 90 172 2.75M 19.4M 20.0M
104M
889 Toast Tita 0.6% 0:08.96 3 90 173 4.98M 14.1M 24.1M
101M
797 mplayer 0.0% 0:07.23 1 9 102 24K 23.2M 16.3M
101M
888 QuickTime 0.0% 0:02.16 3 66 162 3.05M 12.6M 21.0M
101M
876 Adium 0.0% 0:02.27 4 190 183 3.30M 11.0M 21.0M
98.7M
383 YKBackgrou 0.0% 0:10.13 3 60 228 19.6M 4.62M 27.5M
94.2M
348 SystemUISe 0.6% 7:32.92 3 108 272 4.77M 9.14M 12.3M
91.3M
343 Dock 0.0% 0:22.78 4 130 222 1.53M 10.9M 14.6M
89.8M
794 MPlayer OS 0.0% 2:07.70 6 90 139 4.07M 8.20M 19.0M
88.8M
866 Terminal 25.7% 0:22.50 5 71 156 1.97M 9.69M 17.3M+
87.9M


"ps -axww -o vsz,ucomm | sort -n" results in (first few lines
omitted):
50792 coreservicesd
65132 AppleSpell
76112 loginwindow
121484 ATSServer
589696 wsxd
599872 ASM_Controller
600200 SpeechSynthesisS
604408 LaunchCFMApp
606772 Youpi Key
610556 ProcessWizard
612400 SecurityAgent
612484 TextEdit
613084 LittleSnitchDaem
614292 Terminal
615192 MPlayer OS X 2
616252 Dock
617772 SystemUIServer
620816 YKBackgrounder
625388 Adium
627812 QuickTime Player
627840 mplayer
628216 Toast Titanium
631056 Transmit
638072 Camino
638184 mplayer
640932 LaunchCFMApp
662668 LaunchCFMApp
668320 WindowServer
671200 LaunchCFMApp
674188 Mail
674540 Finder
971408 Safari
1137620 TruBlueEnvironme

Currently, VM disk usage according to the files in "/private/var/vm"
is 256 MB, so this not how it looks like when it's all filled up and
problems arise. But I think "top" shows that VM is not 600MB for most
apps, but much less, right?

"Bev A. Kupf" wrote in message ...
> On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:12:18 -0800,
> lefty (lefty@newbox.invalid) wrote:
> > i wonder what it looks like if you run "top" and then type an upper case
> > "M" to sort by memory usage?
>
> Won't work on OS X. The equivalent command is `top -o vsize`.


OK, now my machine is at its limits, again. "top -o vsize" results in:

Processes: 65 total, 3 running, 62 sleeping... 245 threads 12:24:41
Load Avg: 2.16, 2.63, 1.74 CPU usage: 32.7% user, 31.5% sys, 35.8% idle
SharedLibs: num = 112, resident = 21.3M code, 2.02M data, 5.98M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 9212, resident = 293M + 14.4M private, 110M shared
PhysMem: 70.1M wired, 370M active, 151M inactive, 592M used, 47.4M free
VM: 6.01G + 80.6M 83944(0) pageins, 66522(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
381 TruBlueEnv 7.2% 42:28.74 14 218 361 40.6M 21.4M 49.4M 1.08G
0 kernel_tas 1.2% 9:37.42 35 2 213 1.31M 0K 56.4M 532M
427 Safari 0.0% 69:53.65 19 496 852 60.0M 24.1M 81.1M 433M
960 Reason 18.6% 1:47.81 7 216 377 81.9M 10.7M 81.4M 179M
874 Mail 0.0% 1:38.58 9 173 272 7.76M 16.2M 31.9M 149M
881 Microsoft 0.0% 0:24.89 6 95 240 5.86M 12.1M 26.3M 143M
193 WindowServ 4.8% 25:50.44 3 391 744 13.0M 37.4M 30.3M 143M
349 Finder 0.0% 3:39.30 4 216 371 7.22M 10.8M 27.0M 141M
891 Microsoft 0.0% 0:16.64 3 70 215 6.64M 16.3M 27.8M 135M
195 ATSServer 0.0% 0:21.31 2 91 297 1.06M 7.55M 3.89M 121M
958 Microsoft 1.2% 1:41.77 5 94 227 7.07M 16.1M 30.6M 119M
879 Internet E 0.6% 1:23.33 5 88 202 4.59M 8.69M 21.2M 113M
796 mplayer 0.0% 2:25.49 4 179 129 264K 4.17M 11.6M 111M
878 Camino 0.0% 4:13.98 7 106 245 3.80M 9.91M 20.7M 111M
880 Transmit 0.0% 0:03.21 4 90 172 2.47M 6.82M 16.1M 104M
889 Toast Tita 0.6% 1:49.64 3 90 173 4.71M 10.1M 21.1M 101M
797 mplayer 0.0% 0:12.92 1 9 102 4K 3.77M 228K 101M
888 QuickTime 0.0% 0:02.19 3 66 162 3.09M 7.27M 19.5M 101M
876 Adium 0.0% 0:06.19 4 190 183 2.16M 6.28M 18.0M 98.7M
383 YKBackgrou 0.0% 0:10.72 3 60 237 16.4M 3.34M 23.4M 95.1M
348 SystemUISe 0.6% 8:14.88 3 108 276 3.03M 6.06M 12.9M 91.4M
343 Dock 0.0% 0:24.69 4 132 223 1.75M 7.84M 14.1M 89.9M

And "ps -axww -o vsz,ucomm | sort -n" results in (first few lines cropped):

50824 coreservicesd
65132 AppleSpell
78936 loginwindow
124512 ATSServer
589696 wsxd
599872 ASM_Controller
600200 SpeechSynthesisS
604408 LaunchCFMApp
606772 Youpi Key
610556 ProcessWizard
612400 SecurityAgent
612484 TextEdit
613084 LittleSnitchDaem
614324 Terminal
615192 MPlayer OS X 2
616320 Dock
617900 SystemUIServer
621696 YKBackgrounder
625388 Adium
627812 QuickTime Player
627840 mplayer
628216 Toast Titanium
631056 Transmit
638072 Camino
638184 mplayer
640932 LaunchCFMApp
647140 LaunchCFMApp
662668 LaunchCFMApp
668868 Finder
670412 WindowServer
671200 LaunchCFMApp
677412 Mail
708444 LaunchCFMApp
967964 Safari
1137620 TruBlueEnvironme

> Processes: 65 total, 3 running, 62 sleeping... 245 threads 12:24:41
> Load Avg: 2.16, 2.63, 1.74 CPU usage: 32.7% user, 31.5% sys, 35.8% idle
> SharedLibs: num = 112, resident = 21.3M code, 2.02M data, 5.98M LinkEdit
> MemRegions: num = 9212, resident = 293M + 14.4M private, 110M shared
> PhysMem: 70.1M wired, 370M active, 151M inactive, 592M used, 47.4M free
> VM: 6.01G + 80.6M 83944(0) pageins, 66522(0) pageouts
>
> PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
> 381 TruBlueEnv 7.2% 42:28.74 14 218 361 40.6M 21.4M 49.4M 1.08G
> 0 kernel_tas 1.2% 9:37.42 35 2 213 1.31M 0K 56.4M 532M
> 427 Safari 0.0% 69:53.65 19 496 852 60.0M 24.1M 81.1M 433M
> 960 Reason 18.6% 1:47.81 7 216 377 81.9M 10.7M 81.4M 179M
> 874 Mail 0.0% 1:38.58 9 173 272 7.76M 16.2M 31.9M 149M
> 881 Microsoft 0.0% 0:24.89 6 95 240 5.86M 12.1M 26.3M 143M
> 193 WindowServ 4.8% 25:50.44 3 391 744 13.0M 37.4M 30.3M 143M

well i'm just starting to figure out my linux "top" and the mac one looks
a bit different. it looks like the VSIZE column might add up (eyeballing
it) to that 6.01G up in the header VM section, but i don't know what
"6.01G +80.6M" means. even if the virtual size is 6g, we know it can't be
swapping more than 1g to disk because that's your free disk size.

i'd also read that "83944(0) pageins, 66522(0) pageouts" to mean that the
system has paged out to your swap file 66k times, and back in again 84k
times, but not in the last few seconds "(0)". but i might be wrong, my
linux box does not use the same syntax. you might want to see how soon
after boot these numbers start to go up.

five second memory primer: a unix system uses its ram as long as it can,
without swapping any programs to disk. it tracks memory usage, noting
which resources are being used a lot ("370M active") and should stay in
ram, and those which are not ("151M inactive") and can be "paged out" to
a swap file on disk and "paged in" again later when they are needed.

this is why you don't want to delete an active swap file, it might have
half the pages from a running application!

"wired" memory is stuff that the programs/os consider so vital that they
cannot be swapped out at all. they stay in ram.

not being an expert here, what i'd do if this was my system, is try to
compare those top results with my own system after a reboot, and with
another system that is "healthier".

i'd guess at this point that the "RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE" are going to total
up to your real memory usage ("70.1M wired, 370M active, 151M inactive")

this doesn't seem to show actual swap file size, maybe there is another
command on your system for that.

fwiw, you might also see some applications in that list that you can quit.
you can see how quiting them changes the numbers.

In article ,
helge.RemoveThis@mailinator.com (Helge) wrote:

> OK, now my machine is at its limits, again. "top -o vsize" results in:

<snip>

So, do you really need both Safari and IE running? Are you using Classic
apps (lots of apps running that I don't recognize)? If not, turn off
Classic. And, on a slightly different tack, is there anything on your
drive that you could backup and then delete it? Or just delete, for
instance, support files for languages that you don't use, print drivers
for printers you don't own, modem scripts, usw.

--
Fudo