Activity Monitor inaccurate memory

I just added 2x1GB Crucial sticks to my G5 dual 2.5 for a total of 5GB in 10.3.9. But activity monitor now shows incorrect values for free memory. The pie chart shows 1GB of total RAM instead of 5GB. The top command in terminal agrees with Activity Monitor for used RAM, VM, and pageins/outs but does show the correct free RAM as 4.5GB. So this would seem to be a cosmetic issue, but it does make acitivity monitor a lot less useful. Accurate values were reported with 3GB RAM installed before the memory upgrade. Anyone know a fix for this behavior?

Similar issues have been fixed by running the Repair Permissions feature of the Disk Utility. This may also be the result of the address space some applications use to store the amount of RAM installed not being large enough to handle a number over 4GB properly. In either case, the full amount of RAM will be available to the system.
(11910)

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Activity Monitor: System Memory. Questions

Hi apple community. I have a questions about this picture above.
This is my MBP retina performs in system memory.
What is the wired thing (mark in color red)?
Does this lower my mac's performace?
if it do so, how to prevent things to being wired?
and also the inactive (mark in color blue)
what does it do? and does it effect my mac?
if it looks bad, can u make suggestions for me on what to do to improve my mac performance like brand new?
i have my mac for 7 months now.
ur help will be much appreciated.
Thanks.

Apple support articles which seem to answer your general questions.
Memory - Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
Memory - Check whether more RAM will improve performance

Activity Monitor - Java Virtual Memory Use is 16,333.00 TB. How is this possible?

Activity Monitor: Virtual Memory column -
Java Real Memory @ 330 MB
Java Virtual Memory was 16,333 TB.
How could this be?
Running:
Safari
Mail
Pages
Activity Monitor open
Safari was incredibly slow today, as it has been a lot lately, but inconsistently. The other computers in the house had normal speed. I'm not a tech person. I attached a copy of the activity monitor - how it looks right now. I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you.
bottom half

As Kappy says, the virtual memory information is mostly meaningless except to developers, and most of them do not really care.
In this case the Java VM usage is most likely a math error on the part of either the operating system, or Activity Monitor (when a 64-bit number goes negative, but is then displayed as an unsigned value, it can look like what you are seeing; ignore it).
What you ARE interested in is "Real Memory" usage, and who is using it. Look at those numbers in Activity Monitor.
If you want to see if pageout activity is affecting your performance, then start Applicaitons -> Utilities -> Terminal and run the command "sar -g 60 100" which will report pageout numbers once a minute for 100 minutes (adjust the numbers to suit your tastes). Mostly zero means no pages outs. Occassional spikes generally occur when starting an app or switching to an app which has been idle for awhile. Sustained pageouts starts to indicate a problem. High sustained pageouts means you could benefit from either having more RAM or running fewer concurrent applications.

Running Activity Monitor To Shut Unnecessary Functions Off?

I just ran Activity Monitor to see how the CPU on my MacBook was doing and saw all these "root" functions and this Quicklook thing that list almost 600MB of RAM/Virtual Memory usage. iVirus usage 171MB. Are there ways to disable apps and directory actions that are totally unnecessary to save RAM and CPU actions? Any links to Activity Monitor tutorials?
Also since the SL 10.6.1 update, the fan comes on more frequently and the casing underneath is getting warmer. I assume this has to be related to something related to what is going on in Activity Monitor. Any clues there?
I have 4GB RAM.
Thanks for any help and ideas on what could improve the MacBook performance.
Steve

I would stay away from killing processes you know nothing about as that can lead to the OS failing to function. As for Activity Monitor and memory management see the following:
About OS X Memory Management and Usage
Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Memory Management in Mac OS X
Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
Understanding top output in the Terminal
The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.
About OS X system processes - MacFixIt;
OS X Process Management- Guide to Activity Monitor - MacFixIt.

Activity Monitor command-line equivalent

Hi,
Is there a way to gather all the informations that we can find in the Activity Monitor (cpu, memory, open file-descriptors for each process) via the Terminal ??
In fact, I am looking for a procfs (/proc) equivalent...

Hello ccharbo,
You could use the top command. Does procfs (/proc) not provide all the information you are looking for?
[Mac OS X Manual Page For top(1)|http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Ma nPages/man1/top.1.html]
B-rock

Getting messages "startup disk is full" and activity monitor is showing "syslog d" is using a lot of CPU. I'm planning on getting more memory for my late 2008 model Macbook but wondering if there's something that is causing problems that I can also fix.

I had closed out of all of my programs but heard the internal fans running so I checked the activity monitor. It shows syslog d as the top process using the CPU right now. I have no idea what that means.
I read a thread about the startup disk being full and how you can free up memory. I have an airport extreme so TimeCapsule is backing up everything. I do have a bunch of pictures on iPhoto on the laptop; could move those to another location but I'm a little gunshy. I know they are on the TimeCapsule but I would like to save them to a second place before deleting from laptop just to be sure. I went through several things yesterday and emptied trash, etc. I wasn't able to locate the hidden files that the thread about the startup disk being full was referencing --- they were talking about large emails that were causing processes to happen taking up the CPU.... I wasn't able to find out if that was the case for me.
Also I'm going to look into getting another 2MB of memory and installing it on the Macbook, so I can upgrade to the latest OS. Anyone have an idea if that is worth the $$$ over buying a new laptop? Or anyone have ideas as to where to buy memory, etc.
Any ideas - help!

Go step by step and test.
1. Start up in Safe Mode.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
   http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13806
3. Disk space / Time Machine ?/ Local Snapshots
Local backups
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878
4. Delete old iOS Devices Backup.
    iTunes > Preferences > Devices
    Highlight the old Backups , press “Delete Backup” and then “OK”.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
5. Re-index Macintosh HD.
    This will take a while. Wait until it is finished.
    System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

In OSX Activity Monitor, what's the difference between 'free' memory and 'inactive' memory

In OS X Activity Monitor, what's the difference between 'free' memory and 'inactive' memory. My daughters 2Gb MacBook Pro is very slow, it probably needs more memory but there is almost 1Gb of 'inactive' memory but no 'free' memory when an application is opened.
Thanks

Free RAM is the one that has not been used by any application since you started up your Mac, and inactive RAM is the one that was used by an application and it is not in use anymore.
1 GB of inactive RAM is a lot, and it may be the cause of the slowness. There are a lot of apps that allows you to turn inactive into free RAM. I use FreeMemory, but have a look at the Mac App Store.
If you are a developer, you can do that with a command you can type into Terminal:
sudo purge

Compressed memory showing 0% in activity monitor

On one of my Mac Mini's (late 2012), upgraded to 16GB RAM, I keep getting out of memory messages when running apps and on checking the activity monitor it is showing 0% for all running apps under the compressed memory column. I'm running OS-X 10.10.3.
Any ideas on what's going on here? I've tried resetting the NVRAM....

The system isn't compressing memory because is doesn't yet need to; 16GB is pretty generous. The 'Memory' column includes shared memory (system libraries) so there can be a lot of 'double counting' in the figures. You can control+click on the 'Memory' column headers to get other measures.
Try opening Safari and open a dozen tabs with different complicated pages in each one of them, e.g. some pages news.bbc.co.uk. I'm sure you'll be able to start compression eventually.
Meanwhile, your original issue is a bug, or corrupted file, associated with Solibri Model Viewer. You'll probably need to contact its developer for assistance as I doubt that enough users will be reading this forum for you to get an answer here.
C.

Activity monitor- "Installer" takes 5GB of memory. What is it and how to stop it?

In the activity monitor, there is a process name called "Installer" and it takes up to 5GB of my memory. Each time I force-quit it, it comes back on. What is it and how to stop it?

This is often due to a failed installation of genieo/installmac adware. You should be able to double-click the process in Activity Monitor to see the Inspect window, with a list of files used by it.
There are removal instructions at
You installed the "Genieo/InstallMac" rootkit.
and
http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/

Checking Memory Usage via the Activity Monitor

In trying to find out why iPhoto is so slow, it was suggested that I check the activity monitor to see what applications are using the most memory. Here is what I saw (see below). Does anyone know what kernel_task is? It is using up the most memorr and I have no idea what it is. I would have asked this of the very generous person who has been helping me but I could not reply to his last post....thanks for any information.

Uninstall it. You don't need it.
Be sure to uninstall it properly - there will likely be files littered around the various LaunchAgent, LaunchDaemon folders.

Why does my macbook pro keep showing me the force quit screen and states that there is not enough memory? The activity monitor shows that there is plenty of memory available.

The message displayed in the Force Quit Applications window says "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory. The only applications that I have open are Safari and Finder and I am simply reading a discussion board.

It would appear that this error can be caused by an excessive system demand for swap space that exceeds the maximum allocation. Just try restarting the computer.
I found a possible solution for finding the cause of the error. Open Activity Monitor. Be sure you have the Real Memory column showing and the Processes dropdown menu set to All Processes. Select the Real Mem column and sort in descending order. Leave Activity Monitor open. The next time the error appears the application at the top of the column is the one causing the error.

After uploading to 10.9.1 how to I determine memory remaining? It was easy previously in activity monitor.

After uploading to 10.9.1 how to I determine memory remaining? It was easy previously in activity monitor.

I see what you mean. I've not been able to discpher that either. I use a Free Memory app that I can use to free up memory from time to time and when Free Memeory gives me 3.42 free Activity Monitor gives me this:
However, since Mavericks dymanically handles the memory the only thing I watch are page outs. If I begin getting page outs then I'm pushing my memory limits and using virtual memory.
OT

Activity monitor inconsistancy - what is real virtual memory size???

When I look at my activity montior system memory screen I see real and virtual memory in MB (with the largest at about 500MB). As in my previous post I see a VM size of >240GB. When I go to the File menu and hit Save... and then look at the resulting processes.txt file I see that the virtual memory is now listed in GB. The real memory is consistent with what I see on the activity monitor window. See below. What's up? Which virtual memory is real and which is "virtual"?
Active Memory: 1.47 GB
Free Memory: 846.1 MB
Wired Memory: 770.8 MB
Used Memory: 3.17 GB
Inactive Memory: 972.1 MB
Total VM: 231.35 GB
Number of processes: 100
PID    Process Name              User       CPU      Real Mem        Virtual Mem
0      kernel_task               root       4.9      384.3 MB        4.45 GB
1      launchd                   root       0.0      2.2 MB          2.34 GB
11     UserEventAgent            root       0.0      4.4 MB          2.35 GB
12     kextd                     root       0.0      3.4 MB          2.33 GB
14     notifyd                   root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.34 GB
15     securityd                 root       0.0      8.9 MB          2.36 GB
16     powerd                    root       0.0      1.8 MB          2.35 GB
17     configd                   root       0.0      4.5 MB          2.34 GB
18     syslogd                   root       0.0      1.1 MB          2.34 GB
19     diskarbitrationd          root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.33 GB
20     distnoted                 root       0.0      2.1 MB          2.35 GB
21     cfprefsd                  root       0.0      1.8 MB          2.33 GB
22     opendirectoryd            root       0.0      9.8 MB          2.36 GB
25     warmd                     nobody     0.0      5.5 MB          2.34 GB
26     usbmuxd                   _usbmuxd   0.0      2.3 MB          2.34 GB
29     stackshot                 root       0.0      1.2 MB          2.33 GB
30     SleepServicesD            root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.33 GB
32     revisiond                 root       0.0      2.6 MB          2.35 GB
37     mds                       root       0.0      124.2 MB        3.04 GB
38     mDNSResponder             _mdnsrespo 0.0      3.8 MB          2.34 GB
41     loginwindow               prdwyer    0.0      27.8 MB         2.47 GB
42     locationd                 _locationd 0.0      7.3 MB          2.36 GB

Ignore that. The method it's calculated works as following:
1. You have the Finder and Safari open.
2. Both programs and no other ones use the content of a single block of data. This block takes up 2MB of RAM or swapfile space.
3. The block is counted as 4MB in the VM size entry because it's being used twice.
Expanding the scenario over many processes and blocks adds up to a VM size figure which is far larger than the actual amount in use or the combined total of RAM and swapfile space.
(48360)

Activity Monitor Indicates 16+TB Memory Usage !

Has anyone ever seen an application's memory usage displayed in the Activity Monitor as 'Terabytes?' I recently noticed that Photoshop CS3 was using [get this] '16,777,216.00TB' of Real Memory. I spoke with both Adobe & Apple, and neither has any reports of anything like this. Weird!

Did restart, but haven't had a chance to run PS yet. I did repair permissions via Disk Utility and there were quite a few corrections. Whether that had anything to do with it remains to be seen. I did read once that incorrect permissions [set incorrectly by installers] can cause a host of application-related issues [such as app crashes and the inability to launch them]. Other app memory usage looks normal.

My Macbook 4,1 came with 1 GB of memory. Only 512MB shows up in the activity monitor. I just upgraded the memory to 4 GB. Although 2GB shows up in DIMM0 and DIMM1 it still only says I have 512MB of memory. Can someone help?

My Macbook 4,1 came with 1 GB of memory. Only 512MB shows up in the activity monitor. I just upgraded the memory to 4 GB. Although 2GB shows up in DIMM0 and DIMM1 it still only says I have 512MB of memory. Can someone help?

So when you go to  > About This Mac - How it should say how much ram there. Click on More Info - And click on Memory - What is in those fields?

Activity Monitor inaccurate memory

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