Muliple Swap files on Lombard running Panther 10.3.9

My PB since yesterday notify out of memory.
Checking the system, i find the Kernel is using 500 Mb sharing three different swap files. The HD have 2 Gb free, but the kernel left only 475 Mb free.
Any have any information about it?
How to fix it.

If you don't have enough RAM available on your machine to store all the processes which are open, Mac OS X will create swapfiles as needed. Quitting enough applications to give your machine a significant pool of free memory will make one or more of the swapfiles disappear after about two minutes. Restarting your machine will clear all of the swapfiles and release the hard disk space they took up. To check the number and size of the swapfiles on your system, choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu and type or paste in /private/var/vm as the folder's location. There may be one 80MB swapfile in this folder regardless of memory usage.
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My MacBook (late 2009 Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63) often runs VERY slow...beach ball of death frequently. My page ins (5.29GB), page outs (5.64BG), and swap files (10GB) seem extremely high in comparison to most other discussions in here. HELP!!??

My MacBook (late 2009 Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63) often runs VERY slow...beach ball of death frequently. My page ins (3.29GB), page outs (5.64BG), and swap files (10GB) seem extremely high in comparison to most other discussions in here. I don't know how to copy the pie chart so it shows on here but here's what it says right now:
Free - 176 MB
Wired - 592MB
Active - 843MB
Inactive - 432MB
Used - 1.82 GB
VM size - 198GB
The page ins and page outs have 0 bytes/sec in the parenthesis even though the numbers are so high.
Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated!!!

You difinately need more ram. 2gb is the bare minimum to run just the Lion OS, anything extra will slow your Mac to a crawl. Upgrade to 8gb from either Crucial http://www.crucial.com/ or OWC http://eshop.macsales.com/
And you will be a happy camper!

Changing swap file location on tray-loader iMacs

This is not a question, but something I discovered that makes my old tray-loader iMac (the oldest iMac models) run Mac OS X much better.
As you may know, these oldest iMacs have an 8GB size limit on the boot volume. The largest stock drive on these iMacs was 6GB. That means if your upgraded hard drive is larger than 8GB, it must be partition so that the first partition is under 8GB (7.78GB on my iMac), and it must be the boot partition where the OS is installed (whether it's Mac OS X or 9).
In my case, I have a roomy 120GB hard drive (I believe the useable limit on these iMacs is 128GB). The first partition is just under 8GB, the second partition is the rest of the space, about 104GB. I have used every trick out there to move files (such as the iTunes music folder and most of my user/documents files) off to the second partition, to make free space on the boot partition as large as possible. So I have 3.5GB free on my 8GB boot partition. This is about 40% of the volume's total space so it seems pretty good, until you realize that most recent Macs have much more than the TOTAL 8GB I have, as free space on the boot volume. Mac OS X was just not designed to work well with small boot volumes...
Mac OS X uses the free space on the boot volume for its virtual memory "swap file." Considering these old iMacs max out at 512MB of RAM, virtual memory is being used quite a bit. But since space on the boot volume is very limited, low RAM and lack of free space can lead to performance issues. Here's what I observed. When I initially started up my iMac, I had about 3.5GB of free space. Over time, as I used more and more apps, that free space would diminish until I had only about 600MB remaining (as reported by a Finder window). At the same time, I noticed performance getting bogged down and more "chugging" sounds coming from the hard-working hard drive.
I've known about changing location of the swap file, but never tried it until recently. During the Mac OS X boot process, the Mac sets the location of the swap file. By default, the swap file resides on the boot volume (I believe most other Unix-based systems use a dedicated "swap partition" for the swap file). Since most recent Macs have large drives set up as one partition (and there is plenty of free space), and since many users have upgraded their RAM (and virtual memory is not as critical), swap file location is usually not an issue, and there is certainly no need to change the swap file location. However, on my iMac with an 8GB limit on the boot volume and 512MB of RAM, it made a noticeable difference.
I found one set of procedures on the web that was much better than the others I found for changing the location of the swap file.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/OSX/swapfile/
On this page, there are two choices for Panther users. I used the one that works for both Panther and Tiger, because it appeared to me to be more straightforward. The author intentionally keeps the instructions somewhat technical to discourage users who are not technically inclined. I don't consider myself to be too "geeky," but I can follow instructions and type a few commands in Terminal.
After I changed the swap file location to a large mostly empty volume, I noticed much better performance when I have many large apps open at the same time. Performance no longer degrades over time, and the free space on my boot volume remains a constant 3.6GB.
The reason for this post is to share this information. Some users of these old iMacs may be noticing the same issues I had. This is a possible solution. However, if everything is OK with your set up, there is no reason to change the swap file location. If you try it, be sure to take the usual data backup precautions.
If anyone else has experience with changing swap file location, please post your comments here.

Problem has been solved:
background.setCapability(Background.ALLOW_IMAGE_WRITE);Thanks everybody for reading this :)

Pismo running Panther won't mount retail install disk

I'm appealing to the vast wisdom of the collective--cuz, man, I'm stumped...
I just inherited a Pismo, which is currently running Panther 10.3.8. I don't have the original disks that came with it. I DO have a retail version of Panther, which I purchased for my G4 desktop.
What I want to do is do a clean install of Panther on the Pismo's current hard drive (get rid of all old files & get it ready to sell), plus I've got a new hard drive on order, which I'll want to install Panther on, too.
The problem is the Pismo just flat out won't recognize the Panther install disks. I hear it spinning and whirring away, bless its little heart, but then it just gives up. No joy. The Combo drive will recognize/mount/play any and all CDs and DVDs I've thrown into it--just not the Panther install disks.
I've upgraded the firmware. I've tried running the disks in OS 9 (which gives me a "this disk is unreadable" message). The Pismo meets all the system requirements (which it had to, since someone before me got Panther to install somehow!)
Any ideas?

The Panther CDs are practically new & spotless, no peripherals are connected, and the PRAM got reset when I updated the firmware.
It's quite possible I have a failing DVD-ROM drive, but unless I'm reading it wrong, it's not made by LG. My Combo drive says it's a Matsushita SR-8174.
So, great suggestions, but I don't think we've quite dialed it in yet...
In my travels through the Googlesphere, I found one woman's posting in some forum with the exact same problem. Unfortunately, no one could help her and she seems to have given up. Also, a few references to vaguely similar problems that might have been solved by removing the non-original RAM (I have a 64 MB and a 128 MB in the two slots--within Panther's requirements, but I am ordering a 512 MB).
So on my end, I'll try it with more RAM (though, as I mentioned earlier, someone managed to install and run Panther just fine originally) and I'll head to our local independent Mac repair specialists to see if they can swap out the optical drive & see if that's the problem. But I'd still like it if the solution came from the wisdom of this incredible resource. Y'all rarely let me down--thanks.
A related question: if I connect the Pismo to my G4 desktop & start it up in Target Disk Mode, can I put the Panther disks in my G4 and wipe the Pismo & install Panther from there...?

Leopard swap file options

hi,
Back in Panther days you could force the swap file location but it got mucked up and frightfully complicated in Tiger. I have ram to spare. Can you force the OS to ether:
A; never use a Swap file(I have 12 gb soon to be 16 GB EEC ram) or;
B; use a ram disk like you can do in Photoshop
C: Send it to a specific partition if it insists on not noticing it never runs out of ram.
That last part has always bugged me. I always ran Tiger on this machine previously and it was annoying seeing all that free ram at thje same time watching the Os merrily paging out chunks of itself.
So, in terms of preference, It would be nice to have a terminal command(bootup script that would forbid the OS from ever paging out anything. I am so far away from saturating the bus it is not even funny. I have watched it Boinc on all 4 processors and still have 4 gb of Ram sitting idle.

It is time for Apple to fix that performance whole. Why sell machines that have max out slots with far more memory then the machine can ever use even at full tilt.
They have made great strides in the memory use department with the Mac Pro.
OS X only uses a set amount of memory, and then goes to virtual memory.
A lot of this is to allow other applications to use/have access to the RAM, rather than having the OS hogging it all.
There is no user control for this, short of hacking the memory allocation process within the BSD.
Just keep plenty of free space on the boot drive for the OS to run properly, and have a second scratch drive for PS and pro apps to use to run properly.

Fusion Drive & Swap files

From time to time on my new Mac Mini with 1 TB Fusion Drive, I am getting the following error: "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory."
This would indicate an issue with being able to write swap files/virtual memory. If I understand how the Fusion Drive works, the virtual memory is stored on the 128 GB SSD portion. The SSD is full, considering I have 650 GB free on the 1.128 TB Fusion Drive.
Seems like a CoreStorage issue, as it's apparently not leaving enough space on the SSD for the swap files after the computer has been run for a while. I have 16 GB RAM in the Mini.
Restarting the computer solves the issue, although I often use the Mini in remote sessions and when this error comes up, performance on the Mini tends to be so sluggish that sometimes remote connections time out or drop, making it hard to even be able to restart the computer.

Your problem 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. In Activity Monitor, 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 memory over time without ever releasing it.
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:
Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System

Limiting Swap File Usage

i have an issue with my main drive, and whilst i am getting this sorted, in the meantime i have installed a new installation of mavericks onto a 16gb flash drive.
now a usual fresh install of mavericks takes about 5.8gb and this should leave me a few gb to work with, but alas, the swap file has kicked in and filled all the free space leaving me 688mb on the flash drive. this is fine for using safari, but hopeless on trying to update flash.
how can i manually set a limit to the swap file?
this is a temporary solution until the main drive is fixed, so I'm not stressed about longevity of the problem.

The first thing that happens on a new system has nothing to do with the swap file. It's the creation of the hibernation image file that is roughly equal to the amount of RAM in your computer. I'd guess yours is around 8 GBs.
It's a terrible idea to try and run the computer from a flash drive. That may be useful for creating an installer disk or an emergency recovery disk that you use once in a while.
Your only temporary solution is to change the hibernation mode and erase the hibernation sleep image file.
Open the Terminal and paste the following at the prompt:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Press RETURN.
rm -rf /var/vm/*
Press RETURN.
After the first command you will be prompted to enter your admin password which is not echoed to the screen - type carefully.

Swap file usage

Hi
We have recently updated a MII Server from Netweaver CE 7.1 SP4 with MII 12.1.5 (Build 86) to Netweaver CE 7.1 SP5 with MII 12.1.9 (Build 109). The MII server is running on a Windows Server 2003 64-bit with 8GB of RAM.
After the update the swap file usage has increased from an average of 5-10% usage to now close to 80% usage. The only thing changed is the Netweaver and MII version, please advice how to proceed?
Best Regards
/Simon Bruun

The first thing that happens on a new system has nothing to do with the swap file. It's the creation of the hibernation image file that is roughly equal to the amount of RAM in your computer. I'd guess yours is around 8 GBs.
It's a terrible idea to try and run the computer from a flash drive. That may be useful for creating an installer disk or an emergency recovery disk that you use once in a while.
Your only temporary solution is to change the hibernation mode and erase the hibernation sleep image file.
Open the Terminal and paste the following at the prompt:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Press RETURN.
rm -rf /var/vm/*
Press RETURN.
After the first command you will be prompted to enter your admin password which is not echoed to the screen - type carefully.

Not memory consumed, no swap file usage

We have a 4 processor Windows 2000 server with 4 gig of Ram.While running a data load and calc process against one database in Essbase that pegs the cpu at 2 gig, the Essbase server info window shows no memory being used and no swap file space being used....Why? Is this a bug in Essbase, do other people note the same problem?Thanks for any insight you can provide,GeorgePS - We're on Essbase 6.1 patch 3a.

Essbase has configurable parameters that control RAM usage - specifically:The Index CacheThe Data CacheThe Data File CacheThe Calc CacheThese settings will have an effect on what memory Essbase uses during a calc. They can be found in Database / Settings using Application Manager.Regards,Jade===============================Jade ColeSenior Business Intelligence ConsultantClarity [email protected]

Swap file keeps increasing until out of space

Hello, I have a serious problem with my swap file on my 10.6 server. My server is creating swap files that are 1.06 GB each! and it will keep creating these files until it uses all available disc space which is around 40GB. At that moment, the server will basically crash. Has anyone seen this before? I have 2GB memory, could they be bad?
thanks!

dunne89 wrote:
I have the same problem. I hav 62 swap files weighing in at 1.07GB EACH!! When i run multiple applications it says its running out of memory even though theres 100GB left on my hard drive. Im running 10.6.8. I did a reboot about a week ago and it deleted all the swap files but one, which is great, but now they've gradually built back up again and i dont kno what to do. i dont want to have to reboot every few days to be able to use my computer. any suggestions?
As mentioned, what cured it for me was installing the 10.6.8 version 1.1 combo update. Even if you have already previously upgraded to 10.6.8 nothing prevents you re-running this combo update. You can download it from here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1402
It is normal for VM usage to grow over time especially if the computer is running a number of apps, but my previous problem was using up space far faster than normal and is now back to normal after running the combo update.

Best option for a word processor for the G3 dual usb running Panther

More and more I am coming to rely on my G3 for word processing tasks - particularly research notes and a personal journal.
So far I've tried the simple text editor (quick but poor text on-screen), OpenOffice (being xwindow it's slow to load and slow to update screen) and AppleWorks (good display but no spell checker) -each have problems for me.
What is the best word processor for the G3 running Panther (or Classic/9 for that matter). I need: Quick to load/run, readable text, automatic word wrap, spell checking and a reasonable path to exchange files with my desktop Linux system.

AppleWorks does have a spellchecker; it just is not automatic (check-as-you-type).
In AppleWorks, go to Edit menu > Writing Tools > Check Document Spelling.
I've never used anything (in a major way) except AppleWorks.
A couple of options which you haven't mentioned are Pages in _iWork '06_ (or earlier; the current version has left behind G3 processors) and _Microsoft Office for Mac_.
I'm unsure of how well any of these will integrate with Linux. Open Office may be your best bet there. (I'm just guessing. It seems like common sense to me that Open Office would work with an open OS like Linux.)
Another application which is creating a buzz and sounds like it could work for you is _Google Docs_. There would certainly be no problem with Linux integration there. It looks like it would be easy sharing all the way around and you shouldn't find any incompatibilities as long as you have a decently up-to-date browser.
I'm not sure anyone has developed the "perfect" word processor, but there are some good ones out there. Good luck on your quest.

Swap file in use after 12 minutes uptime

Hi
I noticed this a little bit of a strange behavior recently. Once I power my Mac up, the amount of free memory is around 1.34 GB, as I don't have many startup items. Then I launch Skype and torrent client (µTorrent or Transmission) and wait about 10-12 minutes - the amount of inactive memory becomes almost half of total, 20-30 MB free, and swap file is already in use. I mean is that normal with total physical RAM of 2 GB? As far as I know the Unused memory is used for apps I quit not to reallocate it once I launch it again. Nothing launched - nothing to keep unused, right? And swap file is in use for a reason I don't quite well understand. I mean I got the idea behind virtual memory, but this behavior is something that haven't been there before. Just in case - I "Erase & Install"-ed the system last week, so it is pretty "clean".
Also the screenshot of my iStat pro widget to illustrate the situation.

Swapping happens because there is more demand for memory than you have, and some modified pages have been sitting idle longer than other pages that are in use.
If you think you have too little memory for the application set you are using, then do the following and find out. Launch Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal and enter the command:
sar -g 60 100
This will tell you the pageout information every 60 seconds for 100 minutes (adjust 60 and 100 to suit your tastes).
If you mostly have zeros or very low numbers, then you do not have a serious memory problem. If you have an occasional burst of pageouts, but the rest of the time it is zero, you do not have a memory problem. However, if you have sustained pageouts, especially when you notice a performance slow down, then you could benefit from more memory, or run applications that are less memory intensive (or if running too many concurrent applications that you are not really using, quit a few).
Programmers tend to write applications that consume as much memory as they like without concern for how much memory you actually have. In some cases they have have development systems with a lot more memory than you do, so they don't even notice that they are consuming a lot of memory. This is speaking as a programmer that started life writting code on 80 column punched cards and running them on systems with 8192 bytes of memory

0 Swap File virtual memory

My computer has been a dog for awhile now. I finally got Activity Monitor to open (long story). And I noticed that I have 6 GB swap file, but none of it is being used despite all of my ram being allocated. I am certain that this creates slow downs... right?
I checked a few websites and tried running commands to turn the swap file on
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
It says that it is already working. But the 0 doesn't change.
Should the Swap file be showing some usage?
Help if you can.

There's a screenshot. My Memory Usage spikes and I get the spinny wheel and the computer is super slow... but the SWAP remains at zero.

View Swap File Contents

How can I view the contents of a swap file (e.g. swapfile0)? I know I can use the grep to serach for strings, but I would like to copy, then open the entire swapfile for analysis; anyone tried/know how?
I am doing research for live forensic response, and would like to document what info I can pull off a running mac.

Niel,
Thanks for the response.
I am able to easily copy and move the file via finder or the terminal window, but how can I view the contents?
When I try viewing with textedit all I see is "????????????????????????" on every line. I can still use 'grep' on the file to search for strings, but I would like to peruse the file for content or strings that cannot be easily predefined.
Any additional thoughts?

VAR and Swap Files - Taking up 3 gigs of space!

My 60 gig HD has been getting close to its size limit so I ran DiskSweeper to see if there were some unneeded files etc. that I could throw away. I discovered that the VAR folder was using 1.95 gigs and in the VM folder, the swap files were taking up about 1 gig...
I guess these are essential system files and can’t be deleted or reduced in size, or can they?
Thanks in advance!

To clear the swap file(s) restart your computer. I've never had more than two swap files, but then I have enough RAM for what I do. If your system keeps creating large swap files then it is a sign you need more RAM. If you can't get more, you'll need to limit the number of RAM hungry programs you have running at the same time. Because of the things that get dynamically created as you work, such as swap files and temp files, you should have a minimum of 10% of your drive free, and 15 would be safer. If I were you I would make sure I always had 10GBs free. You might look into getting an external drive, and move some of your files over to it. For instance, you can move your iTunes music library to another drive--I've done that because my startup drive is also a "mere" 60GBs.
Francine
Schwieder

Muliple Swap files on Lombard running Panther 10.3.9

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