Activity Monitor, Memory and Freezes

I've had a few Logic freezes recently so I open Activity Monitor to try and find some info. Firstly if the CPU use and threads next to Logic Pro keep changing is there a chance that Logic will unfreeze if it's been stuck for say over 5 minutes?
Also I'm trying to see how near I am to the memory ceiling. I've got 32 GB in my MacPro so it's not a shortage of RAM more hitting the single app limit. I don't understand the relationship between "Real Memory" and "Virtual Memory" as regards the single app limit. Logic has just crashed and the associated readings are Logic Real 2.13GB Virtual 3.88GB, VSL Daemon Real 7.02MB Virtual 867MB, VSL Server 2.35GB Real 3.31 GB Virtual. ousiad (is this East West Play plug-in?) 816kb Real 2.57 GB Virtual, Vienna Ensemble 882MB Real 2.5GB Virtual. Total free memory is 20.11GB.
If someone can help my understanding this would most be welcome!
Thanks
Julian

"Virtual 3.88GB" - That's the one that kills your Logic app.
You can read a lot on the forums that Logic has this limit of around 3.5GB of memory that it can allocate. I want to point out two things from my experience.
1) This limit is about the "Virtual Memory" not the "Real Memory".
2) When you get close to that limit, Logic just crashes. You would figure that it might give you just an alert box with a memory warning, no - poof - Logic is gone.
A few more things.
* Keep your Activity Monitor open and be very careful when you go across the 3GB "Virtual Memory" line. Every additional Plugin could push you over the edge.
* Besides loading additional instruments, there are other factors that you should be aware of. i.e. Apple Loop Browser. If you have a big Apple Loop library and you make a search on all loops, you can see in the Activity Monitor that such a search could require a few hundred MB of additional Virtual Memory. That's enough to cross the line and crash Logic. Believe me, it took me a while (and a lot of frustration and restarts) until I figured that out.
So why the difference between the "Real Memory" and "Virtual Memory" number. I seems that this leads into hardcore programming voodoo,aka "I have no idea". One observation I made is the impact of the graphic cards. Usually the Virtual Memory number is about 300-500MB bigger thatn the Real Memory number. When I changed my 2 graphic cards to new ones with more VRAM the difference between the Real and Virtual Memory number grew to 1GB . Don't asked me how long it took me to figure out that relation. All I saw was that I couldn't load big Logic Projects that I worked on before with no problem.
Bottom line:
The more stuff you load into Logic, the closer you have to monitor Activity Monitor and save more frequently.
Think about how often you read forum posts that Logic is completely unstable and crashes all the time. I bet that a high percentage is related to user hitting that Virtual Memory limitation.

Similar Messages

Activity Monitor -- Memory. Details Needed.

Could anyone point out what exactly the "Free" and "Inactive" memory spaces are??
I'm running on a 2GB RAM MacBook Pro. I don't run too many mem intensive programs. But quite often the "Free" mem would drop to 100-150 MB. But at that point, the "Inactive" mem would be around 500-600 MB. So what exactly a I looking at? Am I facing a mem crunch?
I'm new to OSX. from my previous experience with Windows OSes, how much ever RAM you give it, the OS will take a huge chunk and then free up as necessary. Is it something like that that I'm looking at over here? Or am I supposed to go for a mem upgrade?
And I know the next question is might be out of place, but, after quite wome time of browsing on Firefox, it seems to take 500+ MB of RAM. Is that normal??
Thanks in advance for your replies & suggestions.

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.
It's not abnormal for browsers to eventually use a huge amount of RAM. Use the latest version of your browser that's available. Emptying some of the browsers caches like the History cache will help somewhat, but the best way to recover the memory is to quit then relaunch the browser - or just don't worry about it and put more RAM in your computer.

Premiere CS5 consuming all memory and freezing up

I spent a couple of days farming around 2000 images into a Premiere project on a Mac Pro, Premiere CS 5.0.0 and when I opened it this morning I could see from Activity Monitor that it very quickly consumed 12gb of memory, leaving a figure between 17-24Mb handling the system, therefore freezing the entire system and unable to do anything other than watch the beachball or Force Quit Premiere. I'd only pulled a handful of images into the timeline, so it wasn't a heavy project. Just linked to a lot of hi-res files. But why would they eat up all the RAM when I wasn't accessing or using them, they were just sat there in the project window. I have plenty disk space for scratch and running Mac OS 10.7.1.
I've had to just bail on Premiere and take it over to Final Cut, but still curious to know why this happened and if I might be able to return the project to Premiere at some stage? I've since ran the 5.0.4 update in the background and it still eats up the memory and still freezes up, even crashing the first time I opened it after update.
Any ideas?

My experience using stills with FCP7 is far worse than with Pr. Crash City. Very painful. Esp. with JPEGs.
I've seen issues with stills that are very large, scaled down in a sequence. From what you describe, it sounds like the stills are being loaded into RAM, leaving nothing for other operations. If this is so, you could try scaling down your images, perhaps by automating the process in Photoshop.
I don't know if it's normal to load images in the project (and not in a sequence) into RAM. That doesn't seem right. Another cause for the beachball could be corrupt source images. You could determine this by adding a few stills at a time, and waiting for the axe to fall.
I never used Pr 5.0.x, other than playing around. I didn't think it was ready for professional use until 5.5, so my experience. Maybe somebody else with experience on that version has more helpful info.
I have done a couple of "slide show" style projects in Pr, and other than suffering the occasional corrupt image, it's been pretty painless, and far better than my experience trying the same thing in FCP.
Good luck.

Why is Dashboard using up tons of memory and freezing my computer?

I was having this problem on my early 2012 Macbook Pro running Mavericks, and now it is happening on my refurbished late 2013 iMac. I did some research into this and some people were saying that if you run weather apps or similar on Dashboard which constantly update data, it can cause Dashboard to start eating up all your memory. So I ended up disabling Dashboard completely on my Macbook Pro and haven't had any similar issues on that machine. But my iMac has 24 GB of RAM and I'd really like to keep Dashboard running because I like to use it to check the weather or my calendar or use the calculator. Is this a glitch with Mavericks? Has anyone reported this on Yosemite? It's happening more frequently and unless I have Activity Monitor open where I can forcibly quit Dashboard, all my programs start locking up and the whole system becomes unusable and I have to force reset it. You'd think Apple would have fixed this by now. At first I thought it was an issue with my Macbook Pro, but now that I'm seeing the same problems on my blazing fast iMac, I think this is a Mavericks glitch. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Running OSX 10.9.5 on a late 2013 iMac with 24 GB of RAM, 3.5 Ghz i7 processor, and 4GB Geforce GTX 780 card.

So it looks like the removal of the .plist file didn't fix the problem. I am starting to notice a potential correlation though. I've been keeping Activity Monitor open to check the status of Dashboard to try and catch it before it overloads the memory. It seems that the issue arises generally when the CPU is undertaking an intensive task. Recently I caught Dashboard overloading the memory while I was doing some intensive video compression. The iMac's internal fans started whirring so I went into Activity Monitor initially to see how much memory the compression software was using up. That's when I saw Dashboard starting to eat away memory, and it kept increasing more and more. The compression software was only using about a gig of memory (though a fairly high % of the CPU) while Dashboard steadily increased to 4, 5, 6 gigs and so on. Even after the compression software was done and the CPU started to cool down, Dashboard continued to eat memory. I've attached two screenshots (before compression was done and after) and you'll notice the memory usage of Dashboard (the video compressor was using the ffmpeg process listed)
Here are some system notes I grabbed from Dashboard in one of the tabs from Activity Monitor by double clicking on the process. Maybe these will help solve the problem?
/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/DashboardClient.app/Con tents/MacOS/DashboardClient
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DashboardClient.framework/Versions/A/Dashboard Client
/usr/share/icu/icudt51l.dat
/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle/Contents/Resources/AppleKeyboardLayouts-L.d at
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.kbdx
/private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic Gray Gamma 2.2 Profile.icc
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/sRGB Profile.icc
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic Gray Profile.icc
/Library/Widgets/Unit Converter.wdgt/DB LCD Temp-Black.ttf
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db-shm
/Library/Widgets/Calendar.wdgt/Calendar.widgetplugin/Contents/MacOS/Calendar
/Library/Widgets/Unit Converter.wdgt/UC-LCD.ttf
/Library/Widgets/Unit Converter.wdgt/ConverterPlugin.widgetplugin/Contents/MacOS/ConverterPlugin
/Library/Widgets/Dictionary.wdgt/Dictionary.widgetplugin/Contents/MacOS/Dictiona ry
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic RGB Profile.icc
/System/Library/Fonts/HelveticaNeue.dfont
/System/Library/Fonts/Times.dfont
/System/Library/Fonts/LucidaGrande.ttc
/Library/Fonts/Baskerville.ttc
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ArtFile. bin
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras2.rsrc
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile .bin
/Library/Fonts/Futura.ttc
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Calculate.framework/Versions/A/Calculate
/System/Library/Fonts/Helvetica.dfont
/private/var/folders/lz/xymjhj3955l_05603k8kp14m0000gp/C/com.apple.LaunchService s-044502.csstore
/dev/null
/dev/null
/dev/null
count=2, state=0x2
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db-wal
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db-shm
/Users/Philip/Library/Widgets
/Applications
FNetwork.defaultStorageSession
/Users/Philip/Library/Caches/com.apple.dashboard.client/Cache.db-wal
/Users/Philip/Applications
->0x4a5646e02860346f
->0x4a5646e02860427f
/Library/Widgets
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras2.rsrc

Activity monitor memory numbers don't add up

Activity Monitor reports that I have 7.99 GB of memory in use. However, the numbers for individual processes don't add up to nearly that large of a number. What could be causing such a huge disparity between those two? Is there something I'm missing (and yes, I have it set to show all processes)?

For one the File Cache is not included in the process display as the use of the file cache is system wide. It is also not shown in the kernel usage.
At the moment Activity monitor for my system shows the Kernel using 1.019 GB of real memory, the File cache at 2.95 GB.
There may well be other memory allocations that are system wide function and services that are not readily attributable or allocatable to individual processes. If you look at the screen shot above:
Memory Used = App memory + File Cache + Wired memory.
I suspect that App Memory = the sum of the Proceess Real memory column

Activity monitor memory usage pie chart gone?

What happened to the pie chart that sits in the dock that shows memory usage? I found this very useful in the past, and Mavericks seems to have removed it from the dock options.

Uhhh, I know it's a bit late for this but...
darlingdearie wrote:
I don't have a dock icon called "memory pressure graph".
I have
CPU Usage
CPU History
Network Usage
Disk Activity
so it's hard to know what you're taking about when referring the the "memory pressure graph".
Please clarify. Thanks!
... it sounds like you have a previous version of the Activity Monitor. The one that comes with 10.9 has
CPU
Memory
Energy
Disk
Network
The memory pressure is at the bottom of the Memory tab.

Activity Monitor Memory Pie Chart

I set the dock icon to monitor my memory usage as I do a lot of work in VM's that can chew through what's available. After updating the only icons are CPU, Network, and Disk usage. What happened to Memory?
And yes, I know there are other more informative resource monitors out there, but Activity Monitor had the best "at a glance" dashboard.

This is no longer an option, especially since Mavericks has new memory management routines (ie, memory compression) that make the charting of memory usage less straightforward. Apple has switched to a new "Memory Pressure" approach to viewing memory usage, which is available in the Memory section of Activity Monitor, but so far has not been added as a Dock icon option. Hopefully Apple will do so, as this would perhaps be one of the more useful Dock icon options.

Monitoring memory and thread management for Java 1.4.2_04

Hi,
I have an application which is using Java version 1.4.2_04. The application deployed in Customer site is having some memory issues. There are observing java.exe going 100% in Task Manager. The same application (of higher version)
uses Java 1.5 is not seeing any issues.
Now Customer needs the root cause of the issue and i would like to check the code which is causing the issue. I came to know we can monitor threads and memory using JConsole. Since we are using Java 1.4, i installed Java 1.6 on a remote machine and tried connecting to the problematic machine. But it failed to connect.
i have added the option "-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8880" when starting JVM (this i have provided inside ServletExec batch file, ServletExec is my web server).
Any idea how to connect to the problematic machine from remote using JConsole. Or any other tools i can use on Java 1.4 to nail down the problem..
Please provide pointers.
I have another doubt on Java version 1.4, since there were many memory issues, am i hitting any defect in Java 1.4

hari.r wrote:
Please provide pointers.You need to tell you sales/marketing/business requirements people that they must come up with an end of life policy for customers on older versions.
Unless your company has a service contract with Sun you right now, can no longer insure that the VM will remain secure nor even really running.
See the following for the java VMs that you are using.
[http://java.sun.com/products/archive/eol.policy.html]

Activity Monitor % User and % System do not add up

Looking at my iMac i7 Activity Monitor/ All Processes/ CPU I find that the % User and % System do not add up to showing the correct % Idle.
For example, a recent screenshot shows % user = 0.81, the % System = 0.41 and % idle shows 61.25. The CPU usage graph show nothing going on and the Process Name list shows nothing unusual.
This constantly changes - sometimes the figures add up to 100% but usually the % Idle can be anywhere from 40% to a correct 98 - 99% based on nothing of any consequence running.
I look at the Activity Monitor on my MacBook and % Idle shows correct addition and a constant 98 - 99%.
What is going on?
Thank you.

This afternoon, it will be an entire week without a crash on my Squeezebox system!
Totally removing Intego VirusBarrier X6 from my main computer (iMac i7) finally lets me enjoy my music again.
The main problem is that X6 does not provide feedback as to what it is doing so the user cannot adjust the settings. In other words, no specific message as to what X6 just prevented.
As a crash can occur anywhere from 10 minutes to 8 hours of play time, hit or miss setting adjustments waste an amazing amount of time. This has been going on for a year with the frequency of crashes escalating.
I had already entered all my music devices on the Trusted List and had set up rules for all the ports that Squeezebox uses. Still crashed.
There is no reason why Logitech and/or Intego engineers cannot provide security setup instructions. Unfortunately, Logitech only shows security help for PCs.
Well the nightmare is over. Amazing what free time I now have.
The next three paragraphs are for Squeezebox owners and may be of some help if you are having problems:
A crash (for me) is defined in many ways. The worst crash is when the Squeezebox device shuts off and only pulling the electric plug will revive it. Another crash shows itself when the next song only plays for about 1 second and goes to the next song endlessly until the device shuts off. The Logitech manual says move the device closer to the wireless point when this happens but if they are connected by ethernet cables, this advice is useless. Another crash is when three units are synced and one of them suddenly is no longer in sync and playing a different song.
Crashes can occur when units are in sync or not in sync. Connected wirelessly or by ethernet. And when a crash occurs, the loud 'crunching' noise that occurs is not kind to the speakers.
BTW, if some devices are in sync, make sure these devices are connected the same way - either all wirelessly or all by ethernet. If you don't, you will experience sound lags of about 1/2 second. A very annoying echo effect.

Transaction for monitoring memory and resources on BW server

hi experts
I have the task to determine what occurred from an hour specified on few minutes, because there was a process or program ( we don't know ) which collapse memory and resources on BW server. I check throw SM37 if some Job was executed but no one was. I need a transaction for monitoring / checking memory and resources.
Please I will appreciate any helpfull information.
Regards
mgg

Hi
You can use ST03 / ST03 N also check ST04, ST06 . If you have access to the service market palce please check SAP Note - 618868 ( FAQ: Oracle Performance ) and related notes for more help.
Hope this helps
Assign points if useful
Regards

Activity Monitor & Memory

I have 8 GB installed in my MBP, so why does Activity Monitor report only 7.75 GB?
Mark

Hi Mark,
256MB of the main memory (REM) is shared with the Nvidia 9400M graphics processor regardless if its in use or not.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP546
Regards
Stefan

Activity monitor freezes and shows no processes

I've been having a recurring problem lately. I have two large Numbers files with lots of cell references. When working with these files, my MacBook's brain seems to be melting: operations as simple as changing worksheets can take a few minutes, editing cell contents can take several minutes more. Copying and pasting is a "set it up, make some lunch, come back and check" kind of operation.
The performance was so remarkably bad that I thought I should open up the Activity monitor and see how much of the CPU Numbers was using. However, I found that whenever I try to open the Activity Monitor, no processes are listed and the monitor hangs indefinitely with the swirling "waiting" pointer. No processes ever show up, no matter how long I wait, and the monitor is frozen with the "waiting" pointer. If I try to force quit the process, it is listed as "Not Responding".
Any suggestions for what might be going on here and how to fix it? Could the Activity Monitor and Numbers issue be related? I'd like to troubleshoot the Activity Monitor first and then move over to the Numbers forum if necessary to figure out the problem there.
Thanks very much,
Adrian

Had to do a disk repair from the Mac OS X install disk.

Yosemite - says "not enough application memory - and closes all open applications

Since the day I installed Yosemite I have had problems. First, some other file was downloaded when I did the Yosemite install which crashed the computer. It had to go in for repair. Once that was remedied, I frequently get an error message "Not enough
application Memory and it starts automatically shutting down all of my programs. Normally, first to go is Mail, then Google (Safari would not work with Maverick - it would freeze) then Photoshop and whatever else is open. I did not have this problem with Maverick. This is a pain!
I am working on a 2009 Mac Pro with 24 MB Ram.
Any ideas about what is going on and how to remedy it. I would appreciate it. Thanks

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 and later. Some details 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.

Huge amount of virtual memory and system slows to a crawl

I have a mac mini with 5 GB of memory running os x mavericks and server 3, prior to the mavericks upgrade, it ran fine.Now it is showing an excessive amount of virtual memory in use, 40-70 gb, and the system slows to a near stop: e.g. switching apps takes over 30 seconds, starting one takes well over a minute, pressing command tab doesn't respond with list of apps and the display doesn't always wake up. A hard reboot (hold down power button to turn off, then back on) seems to be the only thing that works to get out of this. I tried scheduling a shutdown and reboot with energy saver but that just resulted in a completely non-responsive system. When the display does wake up, there's nothing in the activity monitor memory display that indicates a high memory usage.
I'm considering wiping out the hard drive and reinstalling unless somebody has some other ideas.
Does anybody have similar problems with mavericks and server 3?

I managed to look at it before the system hung up and it looks like devicemgrd is the top user of memory. Of course, I don't know if this is indicative of a problem as I have only 1 server. I saw it up to 1.4 GB just a little bit ago and now it is down below 800MB and dropping.

HT1338 why is my MacBook Air running slow and I bought the 11 inch with all memory and turbo boost

why is my MacBook Air running slow and I bought the 11 inch with all memory and turbo boost

Please answer as many of the following questions as you can. You may already have answered some of them. In that case, there's no need to repeat the answers.
Have you restarted your router and your broadband device (if they're separate) since you first noticed the problem? If not, do that now and see whether there's any change.
If your browser is Safari, then from the Safari menu bar, select
Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Privacy ▹ Remove All Website Data
and confirm. Any change?
Quit and relaunch the browser. Any change?
Log out and log back in. Any change?
Enable Private Browsing in the Safari menu. Any change?
Are any other web browsers installed, and are they the same? What about other Internet applications, such as iTunes and the App Store?
If other browsers and Internet applications are also affected, follow these instructions and test. Any change?
If only Safari is affected, launch the Activity Monitor application and enter "web" (without the quotes) in the search box. If a process named "Safari Web Content" is shown in red or is using more than about 5% of a CPU, select it and force it to quit by clicking the X or Quit Process button in the toolbar of the window. There may be more than one such process. Any improvement?
Again, if only Safari is involved, open the iCloud preference pane and uncheck the box marked Safari, if it's checked. Any change?
Are there any other devices on the same network that can browse the Web, and are they affected?
If you can test Safari on another network, is it the same there?
If you connect to your router with Wi-Fi and you can also connect with Ethernet, do that and turn off Wi-Fi. Any difference?

Activity Monitor, Memory and Freezes

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