TimeMachine "Preparing backup..." Causing application memory space warning.

Every night at the office, I run a script that rsyncs files from our production server to my local machine, as a backup just in case, and also until we get a git solution setup. I would then use Time Machine, setup on a partition on the main drive, to keep incremental backups of the files.
Here's the problem though. The initial backup, goes without a hitch. However, every time I run a new rsync, and then start a backup, when I come back the next morning, I find a window has popped up saying "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory". The backup itself is only 50GB on a 1TB drive (the backup partition half that). I've had activity monitor open, and it looks like whenever backup is running, it takes up at least 2GB of real memory. I don't understand how it works with the initial backup, but the moment I run an rsync and backup the up to date version, it causes these issues.
Ideas?

Thanks, Klaus. No one in that discussion thread actually explains the meaning of this warning or what might cause it. It's quite possible that my friend will never see the same warning again, but it would be good to know what triggered the warning and what should be done about it beyond restarting the computer to delete the swap files.

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TimeMachine 'Preparing Backup' forever

It is showing 'Preparing Backup' for about two hours before I lost patience and cancelled it. And during that two hours, there's even no disk activities or CPU usage so I guess something's broken. Has anyone had the same problem?
PS: I'm running Mavericks(upgraded at day one). The last backup was several days ago and I actually did nothing(no system update or something)

Well this is awkward. Before posting this I rebooted my machine, unplugged the external drive and it is working now...(the previous several times of reboot didn't work though, weird)

Blackberry Z10 application memory space

The blackberry Z10 comes with 11.3GB of usable internal memory storage. Can anyone who actually has the blackberry Z10 phone tell me how much of this is allocated specifically to application memory?

11.3GB. Storage is storage. it doesn't differentiate. It will be less if you have tons of videos and what not

Startup disk has no more space for application memory - itunes using 19GBytes!

I am having intermittent but recurring issues with the dialog "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space for application memory" and iTunes is listed as not responding. Activity Monitorsays iTunes consuming on various instances 16 and 19GBytes etc.
Any ideas??
System is a ~ 6month old 27" late 2012 iMac with OS X 10.8.4 32 GBytes RAM and 3TB disk with 2TB free. App Store says no updates.

Read this whole message before doing anything.
Back up all data.
Quit iTunes if it’s running.
Step 1
Hold down the option key and select
Go ▹ Library
from the Finder menu bar. Move the following items from the Library folder to the Trash, if they exist:
Caches/com.apple.iTunes
Caches/QCCompositionRepository-com.apple.iTunes.cache
Saved Application State/com.apple.iTunes.savedState
Leave the Library folder open. Try iTunes again. If it works now, stop here. Close the Library folder.
Step 2
If you still have problems, quit iTunes again. Go back to the Finder and move the following item from the open Library folder to the Desktop:
iTunes
Note: you are not moving the iTunes application. You’re moving a folder named “iTunes.”
Test. If iTunes now works, delete the iTunes folder on the Desktop. Otherwise, quit iTunes again. Put back the folder you moved, overwriting the newer one that may have been created in its place, and continue.
Step 3
In the Preferences subfolder, there may be several files having names that begin with either of the following strings:
com.apple.iTunes
com.apple.mobile.iTunes
Move them all to the Desktop.
Also in the Preferences folder, there's a subfolder named "ByHost". Open it and do the same thing.
Test again. This time iTunes should perform normally, but your settings will be lost. You may be able to put back some of the files you moved to the Desktop in this step. Relaunch and test after each one. Eventually you should find one or more that causes iTunes to malfunction. Delete those files and recreate whatever settings they contained.
If the issue is still not resolved, quit iTunes again and put all the items you moved to the Desktop back where they were. You don’t need to replace the items you moved to the Trash. Stop here and post again.
If you later decide that you don’t like the results of steps 2 and 3, you can undo them completely by quitting iTunes and restoring the items you deleted in those steps from your backup.

MAC startup disc has no more space available for application memory.

I have a new mac, very little memory being used, and only a few programs being run...safari, i-tunes, etc. This error window keeps coming up "Your Mac OS X Start up disc has no more space available for application memory. To aviod problems, quit any applications and close windows you are not using. removing files you are not using from your start up disc will help". This window will come up with only finder and safari running, no other applications running. This has been going on for several weeks now off and on. What is causing this and what can I do?

I've had safari, mail and itunes open for a bit this afternoon. Terminal is showing (0) pages in and (0) pages out. I'll continue to keep them open and see what happens and report back if it changes! Here's the rest of the data showing at this time.
Processes: 49 total, 5 running, 44 sleeping, 260 threads 16:02:59
Load Avg: 0.07, 0.20, 0.16 CPU usage: 1.44% user, 2.65% sys, 95.90% idle
SharedLibs: 7052K resident, 10M data, 0B linkedit.
MemRegions: 18435 total, 501M resident, 15M private, 564M shared.
PhysMem: 817M wired, 803M active, 265M inactive, 1886M used, 2206M free.
VM: 122G vsize, 1041M framework vsize, 91422(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts.
Networks: packets: 261079/251M in, 215760/24M out.
Disks: 106874/1947M read, 143722/2035M written.

"Your Mac OS X Startup Disk Has No More Space For Application Memory"

I've been having a problem in the last few days with my Mac. I would be surfing the net, or doing whatever, and an error message would randomly pop up on my screen. It would say: "_Your Mac OS X Startup Disk Has No More Space For Application Memory_". Then the dialog box would give me the option to PAUSE or *Force Quit* applications. But instead of letting me click these buttons, my Mac would just automatically freeze after the dialog box popped up!
The odd thing is, is that I truly was NOT using that much memory...much less than I usually do. Plus I have 4 GB of RAM, and I know I wasn't maxing it out.
Does anyone know why this error message would be popping up like this (especially since there was no way that I was using all my Application Memory)? And does anyone know why my Mac just freezes instantly when the error message pops up?
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! It's quite hard use my Mac right now, since I never know when it's gonna freeze up on me!
Thanks!

I assume that means no backups? That's a problem you need to fix next.
You might be able to start your Mac in "Target Disk Mode" while connected to the other Mac. You do this by holding down the "T" key while booting. And I was wrong: you must use Firewire, not USB.
The other Mac will see your HD as an external F/W drive. You may have to "mount" it via Disk Utility, if it doesn't show up on the desktop and/or Finder sidebar.
You probably need to do a lot of examining what's not needed, and perhaps some maintenance, but you don't want to do that under pressure.
To get it running and buy just a bit of time, your best bet is to copy some big stuff (like video) either to the other Mac's hard drive or to one or more DVDs, then delete it from your HD.
Once you get several GB free, you should be able to boot it. Then get started cleaning it up. There are many threads in this forum with links and suggestions for how to do this. Just search for +Disk Full.+
Did this happen all of a sudden? If so, it's possible you had some sort of runaway or continually failing process, filling up some logs and/or caches. If you don't do routine maintenance, either by clearing your browser cache, etc., manually, or via an app like OnyX, that's another thing you might want to investigate.

When I open my iMac, I get this message - Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory. ???????

When I open my iMac, I get the following message : Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory. Then it says to quit applications not in usw and to close windows and remove files from startup disk. It lists Safari, email and Finder. I force a quit on all applications yet the same message comes up every time I open an application. What do I do to get rid of this once and for all? The computer is not even two years old and is only used for email and Safari. Help will be greatly appreciated,

The message has nothing to do with low disk space.
There is excessive swapping of data between physical memory (that is, the memory chips on the logic board) and virtual memory (one or more files on the startup volume.) That activity is relatively slow and causes the whole system to be less responsive. It can happen for two reasons:
A long-running process with a memory leak (a kind of bug)
Not enough memory for your usage pattern
Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.
These instructions are for OS X 10.9 ("Mavericks.") The procedure may be slightly different for earlier versions of OS X.
When you notice the swap activity, open the Activity Monitor application and select All Processes from the View menu, if it's not already selected. Select the Memory tab. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
from the menu bar.
If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more real memory over time without ever releasing it. Here is an example of how it's done.
The processes named "Safari Web Content" render web pages for Safari. They use a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider them prime suspects.
Another process often implicated in memory leaks is "inkjet4" or "inkjet8," which is a component of the HP printing software. If it's present, force-quit the process in Activity Monitor to solve the problem temporarily. Empty the print queues in the Printers & Scanners preference pane (which has a slightly different name in each recent version of OS X.) If you don't use an HP printer, remove the software. Otherwise, if the problem is recurrent, update the software (which may not help) or contact HP support.
"Wired" memory should be a small part of the total. That memory is not swapped, but it makes less physical memory available which may then result in swapping. If you have a lot of wired memory, that's usually an indication of a memory leak in a third-party program that modifies the operating system at a low level. Ask for guidance in that case.
If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:
sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details.

OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory

This message pops up when running the system for some time a day or 2. Full message
"Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory. To avoid problems with your computer, quit any applications you are not using, Closing windows and removing files from your startup disk will also help."
HD Space 361.27GB Free of 620
2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Dou
Memery 4 GB 1067MHz

This answers both of your questions. The computer needs some hard drive space for swap files and for storing other information while the computer runs. You are getting a warning that there is limited hard drive space that is affecting the ability of the computer to run correctly. Note, that your hard drive it not completely full. It that where so, you would be seeing really weird behaviors and likely applications would be crashing right and left. If nothing is done to remedy the situation, you will likely start to see weird behaviors and unexpected crashes.
Time for some clean up. Perhaps, there are some old files that can be trashed. Perhaps there are some old files that you want to save but don't use that often. Do you need instant access to old iMovie and iDVD projects? They take up a lot of space. These seldom used files could be moved to a secondary hard drive.
Also, use a product like OmniSweeper by Omnigroup; It will help to find folders/files that are large. It helps me to find those "Ah-ha" files. Those are the large files that I forgot I had on my hard drives that I don't need anymore yet are using GB of space. BTW, OmniSweeper is free!
Best of luck in cleaning up.

My MacBook Pro version 10.7.5 4GB (keeps crashing with the error message 'Your MAC OSX start up disk has no more space available for application memory' - what do i do

My MacBook Pro (version 10.7.5 4GB)keeps crashing with the error message 'Your MAC OSX start up disk has no more space available for application memory' - what do i do. I keep force quitting the applications and turning the computer off but it happens again after a while

Hhow much goal and free hard disk space is available? Sounds like you need to move some things off of that hard drive.

Error Message: Your mac osx startup disk has no more space available for application memory.

Hi everyone:
I have a 2010 27" imac. Dual Core i3, 3.2 GHz and 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, and a 90% empty 500 GB Hard Drive. Running Snow Leopard 10.6.6
I have received a message intermittently since I got the iMac. The Force Quit menu comes up and says "Your mac osx startupdisk has no more space available for application memory". Sometimes there are a few applications open. Sometimes none. Whenever I look in the Activity Monitor Utility I see 2 or 3 gigs of RAM still available for use, and lots of hard drive space.
Im not sure why I'm getting the message, nor what to do to rectify it. Quitting applications, like it suggests doesn't seem to help.
I am grateful for any advice.
Lauren

Hey Lauren.
First of all you do have some software updates you should be doing. 10.6.7 came out a few weeks ago. Sometimes doing all of your software updates resolve issues such as this.
To check for software updates click the Apple and then Software updates.
As this issue is someone broad, I would test one of the articles below to narrow down your issue.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1199?viewlocale=en_US
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1388?viewlocale=en_US
Let me know if you need extra ideas.
Regards,
Britt.

Hard disk has no more space available for application memory

I keep this getting this error after my applications freeze for several minutes.
"Your hard disk has no more space available for application memory."
I have 1 drive with 160 GB and 46 GB available. I'm pretty sure that's plenty of free space. And why does my memory need my drive? I've got 2.5 GB of memory. That should be plenty sufficient to run Safari without needing virtual memory.
Help!

Hello! OSX uses a virtual memory scheme and even though you have a lot of ram it still utilizes the paging file. Panther 10.3.9 and below runs maintenance routines very early in the morning to clear temp files and other stuff. If you don't normally leave it on 24/7 then you may need to consider a utility to clear the temp files and do the routine maintenance. Tiger 10.4+ runs these automatically. I suggest leaving it on all night for a day or so and then restarting and see if the problem clears up. Here's a list of utilities such as Macjanitor.Tom
Utilities

New MacAir error states "your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" All I have added is MS Office

My new Mac Air states that my " Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" and wants to force quit Safari. I have only added MS Office to the computer and Carbonite. Any suggestions?

Select the icon of your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you renamed it) in the Finder and open the Info window. What value is shown for Available (space)?

Whether our application caused the memory leak

whether have the command to find out whether our application caused the memory leak !
We are using Jdev10g + JHeadstart(Release 9.0.5.1, BC4J + Struts + JSP) to build our enterprise application,
but when the application running some days in our Application Server(RedHat AMD64, with 8GB RAM), the memory consumed was growth seriously in production environment (one OC4J instance will caused almost 2G memory ulilization after running 2 days) that is caused us to restart the instance each day ! we doubt and worry
about maybe our application suffer the memory leak problem, so we want to know have the command to find out whether our application caused the memory leak
issue and which program is the major murderer for memory.

Ting,
Unfortunately there is no 'command' that will show you the location of a memory leak. First I would scrutinizing your code for any obvious 'leaks'. Then, you should obtain some statistics about the usage of your system. One important aspect is how long a HttpSession usually lives. If you have thousands of users that stay online the entire day and never 'time out', and if you have users on the system 24 hours a day, then the sheer number of HttpSessions might be a problem.
JHeadstart 9.0.x tends to have rather 'heavy' session objects. This can easily be solved by adding some actions to clear up DataObjects and DataObjectSets of previous 'Groups' when entering a new Group. A good place would be between the 'DynamicActionRouter' and the 'ActionRouters'. Just before entering the 'EmployeeActionRouter', you could remove all DataObjects and DataObjectSets that might be left on the Session by actions of the other ActionRouters.
Also it would be interesting to see if the garbage collector can do its thing when the system is less busy. For instance, if your application has a smaller load during the weekend, what is the memory usage on Sunday at midnight compared to, say, Friday at noon. Has the memory load dropped consistently with the decreased number of online users, or does too much memory stay allocated? If so, then there's more going on than just HttpSession objects.
If all this does not lead to a solution, I suggest using a profiling tool such as OptimizeIt to investigate the memory usage of the application in detail.
Kind regards,
Peter Ebell
JHeadstart Team

Msg states: "your Mac os x startup disk has no more space available for application memory...Removing files from startup disk may help." yet, I have 299.11GB of 319.73GB available. Why is msg received?

The full message reads as, "
Force Quit Applications
Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory.
To avoid problems with your computer, quit any applications you are not using. Closing windows and removing files from your startup disk will also help."
Currently I have:
Capacity: 319.73GB ; Available: 299.11GB ; Used: 20.62GB
Why am I receiving this message and being forced to force quit items? Both times the message has been received, Safari was open (frozen) while checking yahoo! mail.
I received my MacBook Pro as a gift less than a month ago and I have only saved 20 pictures within iPhoto and installed Skype and Vuze...no other modifications from default have been made.
Any idea?

The full message reads as, "
Force Quit Applications
Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory.
To avoid problems with your computer, quit any applications you are not using. Closing windows and removing files from your startup disk will also help."
Currently I have:
Capacity: 319.73GB ; Available: 299.11GB ; Used: 20.62GB
Why am I receiving this message and being forced to force quit items? Both times the message has been received, Safari was open (frozen) while checking yahoo! mail.
I received my MacBook Pro as a gift less than a month ago and I have only saved 20 pictures within iPhoto and installed Skype and Vuze...no other modifications from default have been made.
Any idea?

"Your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" - uploading files problem

Hi everyone,
I'm running a late-2012 27 inch iMac - 3.4GHz Intel Core i7, 32GB 1600 MHz DDR3 with the 3TB fusion drive, OS 10.8.4. At present there is 1.92TB of available storage.
I have received this message "Your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" just before a full on crash multiple times in the past couple of days whilst using WeTransfer to send over some large files (500MB+). The applications I have had open at the time have been: Activity Monitor, App Store, Firefox, and Finder. Over the course of uploading the files, the active system memory has gone from 1.04GB and steadily increased until it more or less maxes out around 29GB, at which point the Page Outs rocket up to around 40GB/s and the swap memory fills up pretty quickly until the computer basically can't take any more and blacks out.
This is a pretty new thing, haven't really had an issues before. My main software used: Sibelius 7 & Logic Pro X. I've also recently started working with Final Cut Pro X, which seems to have been struggling at points. I've tried closing everything, restarting the computer and not opening anything (specifically NOT FCPX) before attempting an upload. I've even gone so far as to remove FCPX from my system, and yet the problem is still recurring. Both "kernal_task" and "WindowServer" have been running high on CPU when these problems have occurred.
Does anyone know what might be the issue and how it could possibly be resolved?
Really appreciate any help, I'm in the middle of a fairly sizeable project and the deadlines are just around the corner.
Thanks,
Tom

There is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory. That can happen for two reasons:
You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.
Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.
When you notice the swap activity, open the Activity Monitor application and select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
from the menu bar.
If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more real memory over time without ever releasing it. Here is an example of how it's done.
The process named "Safari Web Content" renders web pages for Safari and other applications. It uses a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider it a prime suspect.
If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:
sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details.

TimeMachine "Preparing backup..." Causing application memory space warning.

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