HT1338 High Kernel_Task memory usage

I am running a Macbook pro (mid 2012) with mountain lion.
The Kernel task memory takes between 800mb and 1.4gigs of ram.
Is this normal?
Thank you

Hi William,
Thank you for your reply. I have 8 gig of ram. I was concerned because i performed a complete restore from time machine from my old mac using the Apple migration assistant and maybe dragged some non-optimum stuff accross. I've checked the kernel extensions etc. and all seems to be in order.
Thanks again
Gerry

Similar Messages

High "kernel_task" Memory Usage

Hello All,
I am in need of help. I have a MBP w/Retina from August 2012. It has worked beautifully until a couple of weeks ago (I think maybe when I installed Mavericks), and it then started to slow down considerably.
I have noticed high memory usage by "kernel_task" but have no idea what that is.
See the attached picture to give you the idea. Please help me to get my MBP w/Retina back to being awesome again.
Much appreciated.

hit the command spacebar and see if the spotlight is reindexing.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/23830668
Did you try rebooting your computer?

High kernel_task RAM Usage in Yosemite 10.10.1

Hello All,
No matter what I'm running, I always have high RAM usage with kernel_task. I've looked around the other threads and never found a definitive solution. I wouldn't call it crippling to my system but I would like to resolve the issue. Below is a screenshot of my activity monitor, and my Etrecheck run. Please let me know anything I can do to reduce the RAM usage of this process.
Problem description:
High kernel_task RAM Usage (800MB - 1.5GB)
EtreCheck version: 2.1.5 (108)
Report generated December 18, 2014 at 10:49:34 PM EST
Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.
Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.
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Hardware Information: ℹ️
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011) (Verified)
MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,2
1 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4-core
16 GB RAM Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0
8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
BANK 1/DIMM0
8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Video Information: ℹ️
Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 512 MB
Color LCD 1440 x 900
AMD Radeon HD 6750M - VRAM: 512 MB
System Software: ℹ️
OS X 10.10.1 (14B25) - Uptime: 0:36:30
Disk Information: ℹ️
WDC WD1001X06X-00SJVT0 disk0 : (1.12 TB)
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
SSD (disk0s2) / : 119.69 GB (61.10 GB free)
Macintosh HD (disk0s3) /Volumes/Macintosh HD : 1.00 TB (529.88 GB free)
HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS31N
ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB disk1 : (1 TB)
disk1s1 (disk1s1) <not mounted> : 32 KB
HD-PATU3 (disk1s3) /Volumes/HD-PATU3 : 1.00 TB (196.18 GB free)
USB Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Thunderbolt Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
BUFFALO INC. HD-PATU3
Configuration files: ℹ️
/etc/hosts - Count: 15
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
Anywhere
Kernel Extensions: ℹ️
/System/Library/Extensions
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sixtyeight.10.6 (1.1.2f4) [Support]
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sixtyone.10.6 (1.0.0f1 - SDK 10.6) [Support]
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sixtytwo.10.6 (1.0.0f1 - SDK 10.6) [Support]
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sl2.10.6 (1.0.1f3) [Support]
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sl3.10.6 (1.3.2f6) [Support]
[not loaded] com.rane.driver.sl4.10.6 (1.0.1f3 - SDK 10.6) [Support]
[loaded] com.serato.usb.kext (2.3.0) [Support]
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/MATLAB_R2015a.app
[not loaded] com.mathworks.sldrtkrn (5.0.0 - OS X 10.8) [Support]
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/SoundTap.app
[not loaded] com.NCHSoftware.driver.SoundTapVirtualAudioDevice (1.0.0d1) [Support]
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/Tunnelblick.app
[not loaded] net.sf.tuntaposx.tap (1.0) [Support]
[not loaded] net.sf.tuntaposx.tun (1.0) [Support]
[not loaded] net.tunnelblick.tap (1.0) [Support]
[not loaded] net.tunnelblick.tun (1.0) [Support]
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Support]
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist [Support]
[failed] com.facebook.videochat.[redacted].plist [Support]
[invalid?] com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist [Support]
[loaded] net.tunnelblick.tunnelblick.LaunchAtLogin.plist [Support]
User Login Items: ℹ️
MacOS Folder (/Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS)
Alarm Clock ApplicationHidden (/Applications/Alarm Clock.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: Java 8 Update 25 Check version
o1dbrowserplugin: Version: 5.38.6.0 - SDK 10.8 [Support]
Unity Web Player: Version: UnityPlayer version 3.5.6f4 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 10.1.13 [Support]
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 16.0.0.235 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20513.0 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
Flash Player: Version: 16.0.0.235 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
googletalkbrowserplugin: Version: 5.38.6.0 - SDK 10.8 [Support]
SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.6 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.13 [Support]
DirectorShockwave: Version: 11.6.6r636 [Support]
Audio Plug-ins: ℹ️
DVCPROHDAudio: Version: 1.3.2
SeratoVirtualAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0.11 [Support]
Hear: Version: 1.1.1 - SDK 10.5 [Support]
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
Flash Player [Support]
Java [Support]
SIXTY-EIGHT Audio Control Panel [Support]
SL 2 Audio Control Panel [Support]
SL 4 Audio Control Panel [Support]
TimeMachineScheduler [Support]
Time Machine: ℹ️
Skip System Files: NO
Mobile backups: OFF
Auto backup: YES
Volumes being backed up:
SSD: Disk size: 119.69 GB Disk used: 58.59 GB
Destinations:
HD-PATU3 [Local]
Total size: 1.00 TB
Total number of backups: 44
Oldest backup: 2013-12-25 21:46:07 +0000
Last backup: 2014-12-16 21:41:48 +0000
Size of backup disk: Excellent
Backup size 1.00 TB > (Disk size 119.69 GB X 3)
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
      12% Google Chrome Canary
      1% WindowServer
      0% fontd
      0% hidd
      0% GoogleTalkPlugin
Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️
275 MB Google Chrome Canary
241 MB iTunes
172 MB mds_stores
155 MB Finder
134 MB Google Chrome Helper
Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️
10.95 GB Free RAM
3.59 GB Active RAM
777 MB Inactive RAM
1.85 GB Wired RAM
2.81 GB Page-ins
0 B Page-outs
Diagnostics Information: ℹ️
Dec 18, 2014, 10:13:38 PM Self test - passed
Dec 18, 2014, 10:05:52 PM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/backupd_2014-12-18-220552_[redacted].cpu_resour ce.diag [Details]

The kernel_task memory usage is normal.

My external HD increases the kernel_task memory usage.

I use an external firewire hard drive, SmartDisk FireLite, on my eMac.
the kernel_task memory usage (RSIZE) goes up to over 400MB,
whenever I connect my external hard drive to my computer.
normally, the kernel_task uses 100 to 150 MB
with all scanner, printer, keyboard, mouse, and etc connected.
soon after I disconnect the external HD,
the kernel_task memory goes down to the normal usage.
I don't know how kernel_task works, so I am not sure if the issue is normal...
Does any kind of external hard drive take a lot of memory for kernel_task???
If I use a USB hard drive, this won't happen???
400MB for kernel_task is a lot to me,
especially when i try to use softwares like photoshop, indesign, and etc...
so, if I could save the kernel_task memory, it would help me tremendously.
I would really appreciate it if you could give me any suggestion or answer.

Thank you very much for mentioning the application.
I've already downloaded and tried the shareware.
It was great and provided more free space after running the program,
I am pretty satisfied with the results I got.
In fact, it gives me about 250MB more in free space on average.
It would almost cover the memory loss caused by my external HD.
However, I still hope there would be a way to stop my external HD eating much memory...
Recently I found my ipod shuffle which I've also used to store files won't affect the kernel_task at all and barely use memory...
I was thinking to get a new external HD as an option,
but I am worried if the same problem would remain with the new HD...

High Virtual memory usage when using Pages 2.0.2

Hey there,
I was just wondering whether there had been any other reports of unusually high memory usage when using Pages 2.0.2, specifically Virtual memory. I am running iWork 06 on the Mac listed below and Pages has been running really slowly recently. I checked the Activity Monitor and Pages is using hardly any Physical memory but loads of Virtual memory (so much so that the Page outs are almost as high as the Page ins (roughly 51500 page ins / 51000 page outs).
Any known problems, solutions or comments for this problem? Thanks in advance

I don't know if this is specifically what you're seeing, but all Cocoa applications, such as Pages, have an effectively infinite Undo. If you have any document that you've been working on for a long time without closing, that could be responsible for a large amount of memory usage.
While it's good practice to save on a regular basis, if you're making large amounts of changes it's also a good idea to close and reopen your document every once in awhile, simply to clear the undo. I've heard of some people seeing sluggish behavior after working on a document for several days, which cleared up when the document was closed and reopened.
Titanium PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

High RAM memory usage compared to other systems

I'm suffering with memory usage problems, only in open 2 tabs of facebook(it's only for example, any 'heavy' page freeze also) in firefox*(for example also, but this occur in chromium also) freeze computer.
I've 1GB of memory, it isn't big but also isn't very little.
I'm using XFCE with compiz (yes, compiz, since use a very lightweight openbox-based session doesn't help, then compiz...) when system start (after login) system is consuming 130MB approximately of RAM.
after 1 hour if close all open apps and see memory usage again consume is something about 350MB, "only solution" is reboot.
all applications(htop,free -m,xfce's system monitor...) that I've tried to monitor memory usage show above scenario, except the 'ps_mem' script in AUR.
in the 'ps_mem' script the result is following (with opera browser open, less memory offensive browser but I really prefer firefox):
Private + Shared = RAM used Program
88.0 KiB + 10.0 KiB = 98.0 KiB agetty
380.0 KiB + 34.5 KiB = 414.5 KiB sshd
408.0 KiB + 93.0 KiB = 501.0 KiB gpg-agent (2)
372.0 KiB + 142.0 KiB = 514.0 KiB avahi-daemon (2)
456.0 KiB + 60.0 KiB = 516.0 KiB systemd-logind
280.0 KiB + 261.0 KiB = 541.0 KiB sh
476.0 KiB + 103.5 KiB = 579.5 KiB xfconfd
476.0 KiB + 153.5 KiB = 629.5 KiB gvfsd
604.0 KiB + 34.5 KiB = 638.5 KiB systemd-udevd
588.0 KiB + 102.5 KiB = 690.5 KiB dbus-launch (3)
576.0 KiB + 119.5 KiB = 695.5 KiB sudo
668.0 KiB + 77.5 KiB = 745.5 KiB cups-browsed
620.0 KiB + 179.5 KiB = 799.5 KiB at-spi2-registryd
804.0 KiB + 67.0 KiB = 871.0 KiB htop
756.0 KiB + 131.0 KiB = 887.0 KiB gconfd-2
800.0 KiB + 126.0 KiB = 926.0 KiB upowerd
752.0 KiB + 183.5 KiB = 935.5 KiB xscreensaver
920.0 KiB + 85.0 KiB = 1.0 MiB cupsd
876.0 KiB + 241.0 KiB = 1.1 MiB gvfsd-fuse
692.0 KiB + 429.0 KiB = 1.1 MiB systemd-journald
880.0 KiB + 273.5 KiB = 1.1 MiB at-spi-bus-launcher
1.2 MiB + 125.0 KiB = 1.3 MiB udisksd
1.4 MiB + 486.5 KiB = 1.9 MiB dbus-daemon (5)
1.4 MiB + 533.5 KiB = 1.9 MiB panel-6-systray
1.5 MiB + 430.0 KiB = 2.0 MiB lightdm (2)
1.6 MiB + 572.0 KiB = 2.1 MiB xfce4-session
1.5 MiB + 683.0 KiB = 2.2 MiB panel-5-datetim
1.5 MiB + 706.5 KiB = 2.2 MiB panel-2-actions
1.6 MiB + 723.0 KiB = 2.3 MiB panel-4-systeml
2.0 MiB + 543.5 KiB = 2.5 MiB xfsettingsd
2.0 MiB + 579.5 KiB = 2.6 MiB systemd (3)
2.3 MiB + 815.0 KiB = 3.1 MiB emerald
2.8 MiB + 578.5 KiB = 3.3 MiB gnome-keyring-daemon (3)
3.2 MiB + 946.5 KiB = 4.1 MiB zsh (2)
16.1 MiB + -12144.0 KiB = 4.2 MiB polkitd
4.1 MiB + 465.0 KiB = 4.6 MiB notify-osd
4.5 MiB + 1.6 MiB = 6.2 MiB xfce4-panel
5.1 MiB + 1.2 MiB = 6.3 MiB panel-7-mixer
7.7 MiB + 1.4 MiB = 9.0 MiB xterm (2)
12.0 MiB + 636.0 KiB = 12.6 MiB opera:libflashp
24.3 MiB + -10774.5 KiB = 13.8 MiB Xorg
18.6 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 19.7 MiB gnome-do (2)
23.2 MiB + 2.4 MiB = 25.6 MiB compiz
168.4 MiB + 3.2 MiB = 171.7 MiB opera
320.1 MiB
=================================
as you can see in 'ps_mem' memory usage isn't nothing absurdly it's ok.
another example, this problem stop me make certain things, for example is impossible browsing in web while programming in eclipse, this is very uncomfortable.
other thing, this not occur in Windows XP, I can open more than 10 tabs in firefox, and eclipse open, etc...
any needing information, tell-me!
firefox*: with memory cache turned off in about:config
Last edited by hotvic (2013-08-12 17:42:21)

hotvic, could you please change the title to something more descriptive? 'memory problems' sounds like you have problems e.g. remembering / recalling things, which is not an Arch issue ;P
kenny3794 wrote:
I've had some limiting performance with browsers lately (Firefox and Chromium). I found it had a considerable cache size utilizing lots of fragmented space on my home directory. I cleared the cache and have since set a limit to the cache size of 30 MB for Firefox. Between multiple users across multiple browser sessions, I had at least 2 GB of cache data on my 10 GB home partition! So far (1 day), this has been helpful. Perhaps this could help you also?
Ken
OP is talking about RAM, not HDD space.

High browser memory usage when streaming video

I'm using Flex 4 and the Spark VideoPlayer. I'm creating an application where you switch between several videos. I noticed that the browser memory usage increases significantly when changing videos and never releases the memory. I ran tests where the video is being served over a content delivery network that has Flash Media Server, so the content shouldn't be caching in the browser. I profiled my Flex application and the memory usage increases slightly when changing videos. I think that is attributed to this bug: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-25785. However, my browser memory usage increases about 20MB when changing videos. The video file I used to test is an mp4 file that is about 3MB in size. I tried testing using a small video (about 300Kb) and noticed an increase of about 5MB in browser memory usage every time I replayed it. So it looks like it's based on the video file size. I was testing on Firefox and noticed the same results in Chrome. Any idea why the browser memory usage would increase so much every time the video is loaded?
Thanks in advance.

That's normal for your machine. Video is fairly demanding in the integrated Intel GPU in that machine. Your CPU has to do much of the video processing. As a result, your fans will speed up to cool off the CPU which is working fairly hard. It's completely normal and all of the MacBooks with the same GPU experience the same thing.

Freezing problem/Kernel_Task memory usage-related?

I have a 1ghz 14" ibook G4 with 684mb ram running 10.3.9, and my computer has been freezing a lot. Some of the crashes are kinda scary, with the display flipping out (looks like a colorful snowstorm) but most are just total freezeups. I did a system restore in August, but it hasn't eliminated the problem, so I've been keeping an eye on my system with the Activity Monitor. the biggest memory hog seems to be the Kernel_Task process under Root user, using up 1% of CPU, 52mb of Real Memory, 713mb of virtual memory with 39 threads. Does that seem like normal usage for Kernel Tasks? My system seems to have a large portion of it's memory constantly in use, around 600mb, and thought that they might be related...

I also just noticed that aound 320mb of the memory that Activity Monitor is saying is used is inactive. Don't know if that means anything...

High Kernel_task CPU usage when charging

Hey,
When I put my adapter in my macbook to charge i have a high cpu usage(500-650%).
When I switch back to the battery then after 10sec - 30sec my kernel_task go back to normal 2%cpu usage.
And then when I had 1 high CPU usage my Fans of my macbook won't turn off even if i have 2% cpu usage.
I have a early 2011 macbook pro 15" with standard Lion installed AMD Radeon 6490M version.
I tried the 2 resets and that didnt worked tried to reinstall worked for 1 week and then it came back.
I hope somebody can help me.

Changing the mother board is the best way to go for the simple reason that the Mac laptops are a very integrated system. Swapping out components on the motherboard would take very skilled people and they get paid large amounts of money. Apple technicians cannot do the job. Swapping out the MB is the most cost effective way.
For Apple, that motherboard is very inexpensive. The labor to swap it as a complete unit is by far the cheapest way for Apple rather than diagnosing and swapping out individual components. If you have ever done any surface mount component replacement this would not be hard to see.

Audio Output, High kernel_task CPU usage, Jumpy Mouse, Laggy/Jerky System

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8670204
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8670132
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8670131
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8670030
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8670028
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8669949
All these threads, tons of other users with the same problem, similar threads on other forums. Please, any solutions? How do you get Apple to hear something like this?

Changing the mother board is the best way to go for the simple reason that the Mac laptops are a very integrated system. Swapping out components on the motherboard would take very skilled people and they get paid large amounts of money. Apple technicians cannot do the job. Swapping out the MB is the most cost effective way.
For Apple, that motherboard is very inexpensive. The labor to swap it as a complete unit is by far the cheapest way for Apple rather than diagnosing and swapping out individual components. If you have ever done any surface mount component replacement this would not be hard to see.

SQL SERVER PHYSICAL MEMORY USAGE HIGH

HI Teams,
i am going threw one of my production high physical memory usage in SQL Server. It always
around 90%.When i reboot the server, it will initially good but end of the day it will around 95 to 98% physical memory usage.
please give the valid solutions..,
Regards,
DBA

This is an expected/normal behaviour in SQL Server box. Memory management is highly dynamic in SQL Server and will use the complete memory allocated to SQL Server. It is also important to set the MAX SERVER MEMORY for the SQL Server instance. You may not
need to worry about this unless you find any performance issues.
Please mark this reply as answer if it solved your issue or vote as helpful if it helped.
[Blog]

JVM performance in case of JVM memory usage is high

Hi All
     Here is some query about JVM performance in case of JVM memory usage is high.
     I have a server of 16GB. For JVM 12GB and for OS 4GB.
     Let say, My Application creating many Unnecessary Objects and consumes very high memory.
     Also, there is a gaurenty that limit of memory is it never exceed 2GB.
     No, in worst scenario memory used by JVM is 2GB.Ok.
     I have free memory available for JVM is 10GB(16GB - 2GB - 4GB(any OS memory usage)).
     Now, for any Application processing I have 10GB.
     So, does it affect application processing for which I have 10GB.
     I mean does JVM performance decreses in high JVM memory usage even I have occupied more memory to JVM.

Hi All
     Here is some query about JVM performance in case of JVM memory usage is high.
     I have a server of 16GB. For JVM 12GB and for OS 4GB.
     Let say, My Application creating many Unnecessary Objects and consumes very high memory.
     Also, there is a gaurenty that limit of memory is it never exceed 2GB.
     No, in worst scenario memory used by JVM is 2GB.Ok.
     I have free memory available for JVM is 10GB(16GB - 2GB - 4GB(any OS memory usage)).
     Now, for any Application processing I have 10GB.
     So, does it affect application processing for which I have 10GB.
     I mean does JVM performance decreses in high JVM memory usage even I have occupied more memory to JVM.

Very high memory usage..possible memory leak? Solaris 10 8/07 x64

Hi,
I noticed yesterday that my machine was becoming increasingly slow, where once it was pretty snappy. It's a Compaq SR5250NX with 1GB of RAM. Upon checking vmstat, I noticed that the "Free" column was ~191MB. Now, the only applications I had open were FireFox 2.0.11, GAIM, and StarOffice. I closed all of them, and the number reported in the "Free" column became approximately 195MB. "Pagefile" was about 5.5x that size. There were no other applications running and it's a single user machine, so I was the only one logged in. System uptime: 9 days.
I logged out, logged back in, to see if that had an affect. It did not. Rebooted and obviously, that fixed it. Now with only FireFox, GAIM, and a terminal open, vmstat reports "Free" as ~450MB. I've noticed if I run vmstat every few seconds, the "Free" total keeps going down. Example:
unknown% vmstat
kthr      memory            page            disk          faults      cpu
r b w   swap free re mf pi po fr de sr cd s0 s1 s2   in   sy   cs us sy id
0 0 0 870888 450220 9 27 10 0 1 0 8 2 -0 -0 -0 595 1193 569 72 1 28
unknown% vmstat
kthr      memory            page            disk          faults      cpu
r b w   swap free re mf pi po fr de sr cd s0 s1 s2   in   sy   cs us sy id
0 0 0 870880 450204 9 27 10 0 1 0 8 2 -0 -0 -0 596 1193 569 72 1 28
unknown% vmstat
kthr      memory            page            disk          faults      cpu
r b w   swap free re mf pi po fr de sr cd s0 s1 s2   in   sy   cs us sy id
0 0 0 870828 450092 9 27 10 0 1 0 8 2 -0 -0 -0 596 1193 570 71 1 28
unknown%Output of prstat -u Kendall (my username ) is as follows:
   PID USERNAME SIZE   RSS STATE PRI NICE      TIME CPU PROCESS/NLWP
2026 Kendall   124M   70M sleep   59    0   0:01:47 1.4% firefox-bin/7
1093 Kendall    85M   77M sleep   59    0   0:07:15 1.1% Xsun/1
1802 Kendall    60M   15M sleep   59    0   0:00:08 0.1% gnome-terminal/2
1301 Kendall    93M   23M sleep   49    0   0:00:30 0.1% java/14
1259 Kendall    53M   15M sleep   49    0   0:00:32 0.1% gaim/1
2133 Kendall 3312K 2740K cpu1    59    0   0:00:00 0.0% prstat/1
1276 Kendall    51M   12M sleep   59    0   0:00:11 0.0% gnome-netstatus/1
1247 Kendall    46M   10M sleep   59    0   0:00:06 0.0% metacity/1
1274 Kendall    51M   13M sleep   59    0   0:00:05 0.0% wnck-applet/1
1249 Kendall    56M   17M sleep   59    0   0:00:07 0.0% gnome-panel/1
1278 Kendall    48M 9240K sleep   59    0   0:00:05 0.0% mixer_applet2/1
1245 Kendall 9092K 3844K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-smproxy/1
1227 Kendall 8244K 4444K sleep   59    0   0:00:01 0.0% xscreensaver/1
1201 Kendall 4252K 1664K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% sdt_shell/1
1217 Kendall    55M   16M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-session/1
   779 Kendall    47M 2208K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-volcheck/1
   746 Kendall 5660K 3660K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% bonobo-activati/1
1270 Kendall    49M   10M sleep   49    0   0:00:00 0.0% clock-applet/1
1280 Kendall    47M 8904K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% notification-ar/1
1199 Kendall 2928K 884K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% dsdm/1
1262 Kendall    47M 2268K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-volcheck/1
Total: 37 processes, 62 lwps, load averages: 0.11, 0.98, 1.63System uptime is 9 hours, 48 minutes. I'm just wondering why the memory usage seems so high to do...nothing. It's obviously a real problem as the machine turned very slow when vmstat was showing 195MB free.
Any tips, tricks, advice, on which way to go with this?
Thanks!

Apologies for the delayed reply. School has been keeping me nice and busy.
Anyway, here is the output of prstat -Z:
   PID USERNAME SIZE   RSS STATE PRI NICE      TIME CPU PROCESS/NLWP
2040 Kendall      144M   76M sleep   59    0   0:04:26 2.0% firefox-bin/10
28809 Kendall     201M 193M sleep   59    0   0:42:30 1.9% Xsun/1
2083 Kendall      186M   89M sleep   49    0   0:02:31 1.2% java/58
2260 Kendall       59M   14M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 1.0% gnome-terminal/2
2050 Kendall       63M   21M sleep   49    0   0:01:35 0.6% realplay.bin/4
2265 Kendall     3344K 2780K cpu1    59    0   0:00:00 0.2% prstat/1
29513 Kendall     71M   33M sleep   39    0   0:07:25 0.2% gaim/1
28967 Kendall     56M   18M sleep   59    0   0:00:24 0.1% gnome-panel/1
29060 Kendall     93M   24M sleep   49    0   0:02:58 0.1% java/14
28994 Kendall     51M   13M sleep   59    0   0:00:23 0.1% wnck-applet/1
28965 Kendall     49M   14M sleep   59    0   0:00:33 0.0% metacity/1
   649 noaccess   164M   46M sleep   59    0   0:09:54 0.0% java/23
28996 Kendall     51M   12M sleep   59    0   0:00:50 0.0% gnome-netstatus/1
2264 Kendall    1352K 972K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% csh/1
28963 Kendall 9100K 3792K sleep   59    0   0:00:03 0.0% gnome-smproxy/1
ZONEID    NPROC SWAP   RSS MEMORY      TIME CPU ZONE
     0           80          655M 738M    73%       1:18:40 7.7% global
Total: 80 processes, 322 lwps, load averages: 0.27, 0.27, 0.22Sorry about the bad formatting, it's copied from the terminal.
In any event, we can see that FireFox is sucking up 145MB (??!?!!? crazy...) XSun, 200MB, and java 190MB. I'm running Java Desktop System (Release 3) so I assume that is what accounts for the the high memory usage RE: java process. But, XSun, 200MB?
Is this normal and I just need to toss another gig in, or what?
Thanks

Norton reports high memory usage with firefox and it crashes often

Norton antivirus 2011 has pop up warnings reporting high memory usage from Firefox. I have been getting theem often and my computer is crashing often after those pop up warnings. Thanks

Safe mode did not help.
I have disabled ALL extensions and plug-ins, but the problem with "zig-zag" memory usage still remains (I've not tried to leave browser open for the night yet).
I think I'll do clean reinstall with completely new empty profile (without sync'ed information) to try this out. If this works, I'll start adding stuff (configuration, sync, features, etc) to see what causes the problem.

Very high memory usage with Yahoo Mail

After using Yahoo Mail for an hour or so my memory usage increases to a very high level.
Just now, after reading and deleting about 50 e-mails (newsletters etc.) I noticed Firefox 17 running slowly and checked the memory usage in Windows Task Manager (I am using XP) and it was 1.2 Gb. My older laptop only has 2 Gb of RAM. Yahoo Mail was the only thing open at the time.
I never notice this problem with Gmail which I mainly use. However I use Yahoo Mail for quite a few newsletters etc. that are less important and which I only check once a week or so.
I found the following bug report about 3 years old which almost exactly describes my problem.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=506771
But this report involves a much earlier Firefox version, and at the end it seems to say that the problem was fixed. However it well describes my current issue with Firefox 17, especially the continual increase in memory while using the up/down arrow keys to scroll through Yahoo e-mails.
Is this normal to have to shut down and reopen Firefox every hour or so to clean out the memory? For some reason I only notice this when using Yahoo Mail. After using many other sites and having multiple tabs open for several hours I rarely reach that kind of memory usage. About the highest I've seen with other sites after a couple of hours is 600 Kb which is roughly when I start notice slower response times.

See also:
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram
Start Firefox in <u>[[Safe Mode|Safe Mode]]</u> to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).
*Do not click the Reset button on the Safe mode start window or otherwise make changes.
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

HT1338 High Kernel_Task memory usage

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