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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / January 2005Is this a memory problem?
I have a Ti G4 PB with 768 MB and OSX 10.3.7 . I have noticed in activity monitor that "Inactive" memory often tops 300MB. In fact, right now it is 339MB (others are Wired=75, Active=225, Free=128). Is this normal or does it indicate a problem? If the latter, is the problem with hardware, OS, or the apps I am running? > I have a Ti G4 PB with 768 MB and OSX 10.3.7 . I have noticed in > activity monitor that "Inactive" memory often tops 300MB. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Is this normal or does it indicate a problem? I don't see any problem with it. The question is not the distribution of your memory usage but the number / frequency of pageouts and how many extra swapfiles you are generating; my MemoryStick app will tell you that. m.  Signaturematt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/ AppleScript: The Definitive Guide http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571/somethingsbymatt Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com > > I have a Ti G4 PB with 768 MB and OSX 10.3.7 . I have noticed in > > activity monitor that "Inactive" memory often tops 300MB. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > how many extra swapfiles you are generating; my MemoryStick app > will tell you that. m. According to AM Page ins/outs = 428605/285292. Is that good or bad? Istarted to look into memory usage because safari was acting too slow, but I don't really know what I am looking for. :-) It simply means that the applications you are currently running don't need all your memory - in fact, they are only using 225MB, (although an additional 75 is earmarked as being likely to be used soon). Bob > It simply means that the applications you are currently running don't > need all your memory - in fact, they are only using 225MB, (although an > additional 75 is earmarked as being likely to be used soon). I wouldn't have worried if the unused memory was shown as "Free". Instead the max chunk is Inactive. Sounds as if it is occupied but doing nothing productive. Right now I have: WIRED=75, ACTIVE = 231, INACTIVE= 424, FREE= 37. VM Size = 4.86 (GB), Pages in/out = 428609/285292. That's exactly right - memory marked as inactive is available for paging out to disk... 37MB free is not really enough, and your page out count is too high - You would probably do well with a little more RAM. My system is good and responsive and I've got these stats: PhysMem: 102M wired, 250M active, 469M inactive, 821M used, 202M free VM: 6.92G + 0B 47917(0) pageins, 150(0) pageouts Note that page-ins are not in themselves bad, the system has to page into RAM as it loads applications, the page-outs are when you run out of memory and the system has to start using VM. Bob > That's exactly right - memory marked as inactive is available for > paging out to disk... 37MB free is not really enough, and your page out [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > into RAM as it loads applications, the page-outs are when you run out > of memory and the system has to start using VM. Thanks. I can see what was/is happenign. I had both Safari and Firefox open for the purposes of comparison and they happen to be the biggest memory hogs, 129 MB and 95 MB respectively. Closing either one will make the system breathe a lot easier. There are other surprises. Meteorologist has balloned to 32 MB, I don't know why, it's 5 MB when it starts. Maybe one good solution is to restart some of these apps every once in a while. They have been running for a few days. > That's exactly right - memory marked as inactive is available for > paging out to disk... 37MB free is not really enough, and your page out [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > into RAM as it loads applications, the page-outs are when you run out > of memory and the system has to start using VM. And that exercises the hard drive more, which both wears it out faster and increases the likelihood that the head will be in use during a power glitch, which can cause a destructive crash. When the number of pageouts over time is anywhere near the number of pageins (as in the original poster's case), installing more RAM would be helpful. |
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