OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

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OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Steve Smith
Owen ( and other OSX fanbois)  -

I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic...

I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often.   I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable.   I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)...  I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)...

I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board failure".   I give my machines a lot of abuse.   One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor).

Anyway...  back on topic.   The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed.  I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory).   I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before.   The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant "Inactive" memory available at all times...

I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?).

One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)?   Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?).

- Steve
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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Gary Schiltz-4
Steve, I think your experience is in line with mine. My mid-2012 "retina" MBP (with an obscene 16GB of RAM) occasionally gets in a nearly zero free memory state. My only really big RAM user is VMWare Fusion running Windows 7 (I usually only give it 2GB of RAM, and it runs fine). By the time it gets in this state, there is usually about 4GB of "inactive" memory shown in the Activity Monitor. Doing a command line "purge" returns most of that. A full reboot, followed by opening all the same apps and docs shows much less memory used than before the reboot. I'm getting to be less of a "fanboi" for Apple than ever.

Gary

On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:27 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen ( and other OSX fanbois)  -

I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic...

I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often.   I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable.   I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)...  I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)...

I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board failure".   I give my machines a lot of abuse.   One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor).

Anyway...  back on topic.   The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed.  I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory).   I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before.   The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant "Inactive" memory available at all times...

I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?).

One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)?   Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?).

- Steve


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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Owen Densmore
Administrator
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
O
n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention.  Since then, no.  But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better.

Before SSD, I had to run "purge" in a terminal to get the memory back.  I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD.

Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better.  Maybe Mountain Lion did so?

   -- Owen


On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Owen ( and other OSX fanbois)  -

I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic...

I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often.   I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable.   I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)...  I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)...

I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board failure".   I give my machines a lot of abuse.   One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor).

Anyway...  back on topic.   The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed.  I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory).   I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before.   The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant "Inactive" memory available at all times...

I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?).

One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)?   Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?).

- Steve

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Gary Schiltz-4
Forgot to mention that I'm on Mountain Lion, so no, it doesn't do any better :-(

;; Gary

On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:45 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

O
n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention.  Since then, no.  But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better.

Before SSD, I had to run "purge" in a terminal to get the memory back.  I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD.

Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better.  Maybe Mountain Lion did so?

   -- Owen


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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
Gary/Owen -

Thanks for the quick response from both of you.

I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.    My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby.

I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the "problem" of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity.  I don't see it doing it, even though it must be.  Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory.  

Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!).

I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user?  

I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines.  I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space?   Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available?   I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the "golden days of UNIX" are still relevant!

- Steve


O
n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience you mention.  Since then, no.  But likely the behavior is still the same, just that the SSD manages it better.

Before SSD, I had to run "purge" in a terminal to get the memory back.  I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD.

Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better.  Maybe Mountain Lion did so?

   -- Owen


On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Owen ( and other OSX fanbois)  -

I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical details of this topic...

I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often.   I began to look at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every one had memory leaks.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable.   I kind of assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)...  I also assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the cracks)...

I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board failure".   I give my machines a lot of abuse.   One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor).

Anyway...  back on topic.   The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G and Mountain Lion installed.  I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and max memory).   I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free memory as before.   The big difference was that I was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had significant "Inactive" memory available at all times...

I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time... perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory management libraries out of date?).

One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)?   Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of trouble?).

- Steve

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Gary Schiltz-4

On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Gary/Owen -
>
> Thanks for the quick response from both of you.
>
> I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.    My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby.
>
> I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the "problem" of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity.  I don't see it doing it, even though it must be.  Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory.  
>
> Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!).

I still get spinning whatchamcallits, even with Apple's own apps (especially iTunes - I have my music library on my Time Capsule, served over the wireless network, so it's primarily the first time after not having that volume mounted for a while). Same goes for Mail.app - spinning wheels at times. Spinning wheels are more frequent as free memory gets lower, but even with lots free, still some spinning.

I must say that despite not really being a fan of Microsoft, Windows 7 does perform very well (even in a 2GB VM). If I had it to do over (or next time), I would look into a laptop with Linux as the installed OS, and running Windows under VMWare or VirtualBox. I mainly went with another MacBook Pro in case I want to do iOS development, and to stay in Apple's good graces, a "Hackintosh" doesn't cut it.

;; Gary

>
> I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user?  
>
> I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines.  I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space?   Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available?   I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the "golden days of UNIX" are still relevant!
>
> - Steve


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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Steve Smith
Gary -

Spinning Watzits...  yes, I presume (but don't know) what all that is
about is anytime the Window Manager thinks some threshold for User
Interaction has been exceeded it throws up a hypnotic spinning wheel (in
place of the old tumbling hourglass?) to at least acknowledge that they
know they are keeping you waiting. So I am used to getting those while
my cursor is in-focus on a GUI app that I *know* just asked to do
something hard (like you describe with iPhoto).

The symptom I was getting with my old system (which hasn't returned
quite yet) is spinning Watzits just from changing input focus from one
app to another and/or doing the simplest of things inside of any given
app (trying to highlight and delete a section of text in Thunderbird).

I *did* just do a little superficial research and found a *little*
superficial information on OSX's VM and was reminded that OSX's version
of what I know as "vmstat" is "vm_stat".

http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/08/mac-virtual-memory-swap/

Their hint about the ratio of swap-in vs swap-out was promising. Also,
on my last system I was running on about 1-10 GB of free disk space most
of the time.  I don't know how VM Swap Space is allocated, but it might
have been cut way down because of my limited free space (or it might
have been holding huge amounts on principle in case it needed it?).

Amazing what happens when we start treating our "tools" as appliances?  
"If you can't field strip it blindfolded in a ditch, you don't own it"
might be a good motto, even for computer jocks (jerks).

I have a copy of W7 to put on my PBpro and am sorting out how to manage
that now... Fusion, Parallels, WINE, BootCamp?   Sounds like you are
happy with Fusion?

- Steve

> On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Gary/Owen -
>>
>> Thanks for the quick response from both of you.
>>
>> I forgot about Purge... it seemed like such a kludge I guess I dropped it from my memory soon after learning about it.    My analytic approach to some things has me trying to unearth root causes when a simple, practical relief is nearby.
>>
>> I think that Mountain Lion did not solve the "problem" of freeing inactive memory, but it may have solved the problem of letting that step slow down interactivity.  I don't see it doing it, even though it must be.  Under my 4G 10.6 system, I think that is what was dogging my system... OSX having to stop everything while it freed some inactive memory.
>>
>> Gary, are you saying that you not only get your physical memory saturated (with a bunch of Inactive) or that you see that causing problems at the user level (spinning wheels!).
> I still get spinning whatchamcallits, even with Apple's own apps (especially iTunes - I have my music library on my Time Capsule, served over the wireless network, so it's primarily the first time after not having that volume mounted for a while). Same goes for Mail.app - spinning wheels at times. Spinning wheels are more frequent as free memory gets lower, but even with lots free, still some spinning.
>
> I must say that despite not really being a fan of Microsoft, Windows 7 does perform very well (even in a 2GB VM). If I had it to do over (or next time), I would look into a laptop with Linux as the installed OS, and running Windows under VMWare or VirtualBox. I mainly went with another MacBook Pro in case I want to do iOS development, and to stay in Apple's good graces, a "Hackintosh" doesn't cut it.
>
> ;; Gary
>
>> I would guess that with an SSD, that step, while maybe handled poorly otherwise becomes below the noticeable threshold of the user?
>>
>> I'm also unclear on exactly how virtual memory is handled on these new high-memory machines.  I grew up in the era where physical memory was tiny (by today's standards) and virtual memory management was critical to time-sharing... as far as I can tell from my activity monitor/process table, none of my applications are actually *using* swap space?   Isn't that the point of an indicator that you actually HAVE free memory available?   I would expect a tool that also showed how much swap space was being used by what processes, and in fact if I dredge my own memory might find that some of the tools from the "golden days of UNIX" are still relevant!
>>
>> - Steve
>
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> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Gary Schiltz-4

On Jul 5, 2013, at 4:26 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I have a copy of W7 to put on my PBpro and am sorting out how to manage that now... Fusion, Parallels, WINE, BootCamp?   Sounds like you are happy with Fusion?

I've been happy with Fusion since v2 (I'm at 5 now, and have paid for the upgrades). I got Parallels free with the laptop, and tried it for a while, but I was so used to Fusion's UI that I stayed with it anyway. I tried VirtualBox for a while just because I like open source on principle, but it certainly isn't as polished as Fusion (or Parallels).

;; Gary
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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Russell Standish-2
In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
One thing that is easy to forget is that most modern OS use any "free"
RAM for disk cache (aka buffers), so you will always look like you're
using 100% RAM.

What's really important is to look for processes in the D state under top,
(which are doing I/O) and also the amount of swap actually being used.

But something has really gone awry on modern GUIs - my wife swears at
(not by) the KDE interface running on my Linux box when things slow to
a crawl (usually when I'm doing something slightly I/O intensive),
whereas my trusty (and perhaps krusty) old fvwm is as lithe and
responsive as ever.

I used a Windows 7 machine at a previous client's with 4GB of memory
and quad core. The machine would always slow to a crawl if I had
Visual Studio, Firefox and Eclipse all open at the same time (and of
course Cygwin), and even without eclipse running, I would need to
restart Visual Studio and Firefox on the order of once a day to
reclaim leaked memory. I got good at selectively killing processes so
that I didn't need to do a full reboot every time. The CPU might be
quad core, but never saw the load average go much above about 1.5,
even with multiple parallel C++ compiles happening - the machine was
far too I/O dominated.

Something is wrong with Virtual Memory handling in modern UIs - it
doesn't seem to matter which OS you're using. It's one good reaon
keeping me using Linux, because I have the choice to use a minimal
window manager that gets out of the way and lets you use the machine.

Cheers

On Fri, Jul 05, 2013 at 02:45:53PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote:

> O
> n my non-SSD mini, before the change to SSD, I often had the experience
> you mention.  Since then, no.  But likely the behavior is still the same,
> just that the SSD manages it better.
>
> Before SSD, I had to run "purge" in a terminal to get the memory back.
>  I'll try starting lots of apps and see what happens on the new mini/SSD.
>
> Would be nice if Apple, finally, learns to handle swap space better.  Maybe
> Mountain Lion did so?
>
>    -- Owen
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> >  Owen ( and other OSX fanbois)  -
> >
> > I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical
> > details of this topic...
> >
> > I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6 months
> > ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the rainbow
> > frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often.   I began to look at the
> > process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that **all** my
> > applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and every
> > one had memory leaks.
> >
> > Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable.   I kind of assumed
> > that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and aggravated
> > by the fact that they were all naturally wanting/needing/using lots of
> > their own internal cache (well, maybe not Tbird so much?)...  I also
> > assumed that I had not updated my system properly (I tend to be pretty
> > cavalier about keeping up with suggested updates, but trust the system (at
> > large) to know what needs to be updated and not leave anything in the
> > cracks)...
> >
> > I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to replace
> > the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was NOT that my
> > battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take power... I finally
> > gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board failure".   I give my
> > machines a lot of abuse.   One of the SFX interns inherited the one my wife
> > ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used it with an external monitor).
> >
> > Anyway...  back on topic.   The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had 8G
> > and Mountain Lion installed.  I assumed (hoped futilely) that my problems
> > would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4 install and
> > max memory).   I didn't fret about it much but within a few days I started
> > noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught me to compulsively
> > check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating on virtually 0 free
> > memory as before.   The big difference was that I was not getting the
> > whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2 of the memory is
> > labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6 circumstance I also had
> > significant "Inactive" memory available at all times...
> >
> > I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration is
> > more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time... perhaps
> > because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or perhaps 10.8
> > fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly configured (memory
> > management libraries out of date?).
> >
> > One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating
> > physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive memory)?
> > Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or just my lame
> > understanding of how the memory management is supposed to work (I would
> > sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory more effectively
> > than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM to keep them out of
> > trouble?).
> >
> > - Steve
> >
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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Owen Densmore
Administrator
OK, just filled two workspaces with 20 apps on the new Mac Mini SSD.  The Activity Monitor showed completely full.  Image below.  Here are the workspace images:

I then used it, hard! .. changing from app to app, to finder, etc and it was really snappy.  Before it simply would have hit me with the beach-ball-of-death.  This is seriously extraordinary.

So basically, something magic happens with SSD.  Speed, sure.  But I think something else, not sure what.  Possibly the swapping system has timeouts that work against us?

Anyway, max apps .. which I NEVER would have done before, with max Activity Monotor sys-memory, and every app acted if it was the only one on the computer.  Amazing.

   -- Owen

Inline image 1

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Marcus G. Daniels
On 7/6/13 9:46 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
I then used it, hard! .. changing from app to app, to finder, etc and it was really snappy.  Before it simply would have hit me with the beach-ball-of-death.  This is seriously extraordinary.
Now you have another excuse for upgrading an otherwise usable laptop besides gratuitous novelty and that the battery stops taking a charge:  You destroy its flash using it for swap.   :-)
But indeed, it's got no significant seek cost.  Better yet, double the RAM.

Marcus

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Marcus G. Daniels
On 7/6/13 10:45 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
On 7/6/13 9:46 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
I then used it, hard! .. changing from app to app, to finder, etc and it was really snappy.  Before it simply would have hit me with the beach-ball-of-death.  This is seriously extraordinary.
Now you have another excuse for upgrading an otherwise usable laptop besides gratuitous novelty and that the battery stops taking a charge:  You destroy its flash using it for swap.   :-)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-ram-endurance,3475.html

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Steve Smith
Marcus-

When you posted the original point, I went and did some research because I had not thought much about MTBF of flash memory and SSDs before.   I did not find the article you reference but did find some descriptions of SSD memory having lifetimes of order 100,000 to 1,000,000 writes which many claimed implied a lifetime of order 10 years. 

 I was also surprised that SSDs are (anecdotally?) prone to abrupt rather than degraded failure?   I would assume that the flash memory in SSDs have roughly the same error correction/detection any memory does and that the file system/drivers would have the same opportunity to "bad block" sectons of the SSD, but according to the few descriptions of the failure modes of these systems I could find, that is apparently not the case.   I have speculations about why that might be but nothing really very motivating.

I was really interested in the hybrid SSD/HD systems and found even less about them.   When you put a *small* SSD (32G) piggybacked on a conventional HD, you would expect that the optimization tools would make sure that your OS, system drivers, regularly used apps would all reside there and then perhaps swap,  giving you a great deal of the performance a fat SSD provided.   Perhaps the drivers for these acknowledge that using an SSD for swap is just asking for early failure? 

As far as I can tell, this hybrid configuration is not all that popular but I can't tell exactly why.  I am guessing that maybe once someone is willing to make the leap to replace an internal drive they go the whole way for an SSD on principle?  

I'm all for maxing memory, but on some old systems that means 4 or 8G.  

As for batteries that won't take a charge... I *do* know this is one of the most commonly stated reasons I hear for buying a new laptop...  I don't know if Apple was generating planned obselescence when they went from removable batteries to non-user-replaceable ones.   Even while my charge port was degenerating to a lump of burned

I've never been shy about cracking the case on my own machines and digging through the guts as needed, but I understand why others can be shy of that.  The MB Pro batteries are laughingly easy to replace, though somewhat expensive...  memory and HD are equally easy (and both of them are treated as user-replaceable by warranty I think).

I don't know about the rest of you here, but I think warrantys and especially extended warrantys are tools of the devil... they keep you from even peeking under the hood, much less being willing (and therefore interested?) in repairing or upgrading anything yourself.   We are becoming a culture of wimps about our own tech.   I like the Maker slogan that says "if you can't open the case, you don't own it", and a friend whose first comment when he sees a new tech toy "hey, let's run that through a bandsaw and see what's inside!".

My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable.  Today I would have a hard time justifying the expense of something bigger than 128G which just doesn't hack it with my bad data habits... I just bumped up from 350 to 700 and the data sets I'm generating (massive photo collections, 3D point clouds and meshes generated from them, etc.) are not getting smaller, and while I do back up and even offload much of this, the "working copies" that I want with me at all times continue to expand.

- Steve
On 7/6/13 10:45 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
On 7/6/13 9:46 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
I then used it, hard! .. changing from app to app, to finder, etc and it was really snappy.  Before it simply would have hit me with the beach-ball-of-death.  This is seriously extraordinary.
Now you have another excuse for upgrading an otherwise usable laptop besides gratuitous novelty and that the battery stops taking a charge:  You destroy its flash using it for swap.   :-)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-ram-endurance,3475.html


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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
"I did not find the article you reference but did find some descriptions of
SSD memory having lifetimes of order 100,000 to 1,000,000 writes which
many claimed implied a lifetime of order 10 years."

It's probably fine for most people who aren't running data-intensive apps.
With swap to disk, a user pretty much has to stop what they are doing when
they run out of RAM.  With flash, a machine that just didn't have enough
RAM could be swapping all the time, and it would seem tolerably responsive.

On Linux one can look at the swap device in /proc/diskstats and compare the
swap device's counts with the update and get an estimate of writes per unit
time.  For a server or workstation that might not be a bad estimate
provided the machine gets lots of workloads and is up for extended amounts
of time.  

"I was really interested in the hybrid SSD/HD systems and found even less
about them."

There seems to be a lot of variance in the results for Linux kernel
(software) solutions.  I'm just getting started with bcache.  The popular
Linux distributions don't yet have the right kernels to make this
experimentation convenient, but hopefully in the next month or so.  

Marcus

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Steve Smith


Original email:
"On Linux one can look at the swap device in /proc/diskstats and compare the
swap device's counts with the update and get an estimate of writes per unit
time."

Perhaps non-obvious typo:  update -> uptime (i.e. system uptime)

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
On 7/12/13, 4:08 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable. 
OSX Mavericks now has compression in the virtual memory system.   I've been doing parallel builds all day and I see the Activity Monitor regularly showing 2GB of compressed memory (on an old 4GB 2009 era MacBook Pro).   If that had to hit disk, the system would grind to a halt, but it doesn't.   It seems to work well.

Marcus

P.S. Linux has had this for a while in various forms for a number of years, e.g compcache.

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Owen Densmore
Administrator
Just converted to Mavericks and it seem great.  And the upgrade was free .. not sure why.

Steps:
First
- Clean obsolete kruft from computer.  OmniDiskSweeper (free) is very useful.
  Also look at apps finding old and unused apps especially ones unlikely to run.
  Delete with AppZapper or similar .. need to remove prefs etc.
- Build a Superduper bootable backup.  This is useful both as a fallback, and if you 
  want a clean build, you boot from that and have the installer build on your 
  internal boot disk.  Probably need to clear/format/repair the disk w/ DiskUtil.
- I searched for a "how to migrate to Mavericks" article which included all that
Then
- Go to App Store and download installer (takes quite a while due to size)
- When downloaded, pops up the installer.  You can quit it and install later if you'd like, in Apps folder
- Took quite a while to install as well, but seemed to do a sweet job
- Initially asked for lots of permissions and other transition annoyances, but not bad.
- Smoothest install I've ever had.

   -- Owen


On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
On 7/12/13, 4:08 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable. 
OSX Mavericks now has compression in the virtual memory system.   I've been doing parallel builds all day and I see the Activity Monitor regularly showing 2GB of compressed memory (on an old 4GB 2009 era MacBook Pro).   If that had to hit disk, the system would grind to a halt, but it doesn't.   It seems to work well.

Marcus

P.S. Linux has had this for a while in various forms for a number of years, e.g compcache.

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Steve Smith
Thanks to both Owen and Marcus for the good reports...  While I've never dreaded an OSX update like I have Winderz major releases, I have always avoided being an early adopter...  I might just take the plunge.

I'm wondering why VM compression hasn't caught on sooner?   Has the physical memory curve kept ahead of it well enough, or is the compute-cost simply too high?

My mother-in-law's 2009 MacBook (not pro) is grinding a lot on VM (mostly from web browsing)... I was going to look into possibly downgrading her Safari/Firefox to an older version that might not be as memory-hungry, or putting in some extra memory... but maybe upgrading her system to Mavericks will provide the needed relief?

Except for the very unfortunate codename "Mavericks" it sounds very promising...  supposedly the name came from a Surf Beach near Half Moon Bay, possibly suggesting "a new wave" in OS...   despite apparently being very similar to Mountain Lion, maybe it *does* portend a "new wave".   One has to wonder "did they just run out of Big Cat names?" in the same way that they are running out of decimal digits (10.9) or does this signify a significant change in direction (gearing up for a big change in 11 and naming after surf beaches for the next generation?).

Sadly I can't hear the term "Mavericks" without hearing it in Sarah Palin's pinched Wasila-Whine of a voice.   I'll try to superpose the image of a young James Garner making some dry, witty remark near the end of a poker game on a riverboat instead.   And who knew that Roger Moore was on that late 50's TV western as cousin Beau Maverick?


Just converted to Mavericks and it seem great.  And the upgrade was free .. not sure why.

Steps:
First
- Clean obsolete kruft from computer.  OmniDiskSweeper (free) is very useful.
  Also look at apps finding old and unused apps especially ones unlikely to run.
  Delete with AppZapper or similar .. need to remove prefs etc.
- Build a Superduper bootable backup.  This is useful both as a fallback, and if you 
  want a clean build, you boot from that and have the installer build on your 
  internal boot disk.  Probably need to clear/format/repair the disk w/ DiskUtil.
- I searched for a "how to migrate to Mavericks" article which included all that
Then
- Go to App Store and download installer (takes quite a while due to size)
- When downloaded, pops up the installer.  You can quit it and install later if you'd like, in Apps folder
- Took quite a while to install as well, but seemed to do a sweet job
- Initially asked for lots of permissions and other transition annoyances, but not bad.
- Smoothest install I've ever had.

   -- Owen


On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
On 7/12/13, 4:08 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable. 
OSX Mavericks now has compression in the virtual memory system.   I've been doing parallel builds all day and I see the Activity Monitor regularly showing 2GB of compressed memory (on an old 4GB 2009 era MacBook Pro).   If that had to hit disk, the system would grind to a halt, but it doesn't.   It seems to work well.

Marcus

P.S. Linux has had this for a while in various forms for a number of years, e.g compcache.

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Gary Schiltz-4
I jumped on board too, and have been happy. Since my hard drive was less than half full, I first created a new partition and installed Mavericks on it. Once I had convinced myself I liked it, I copied data and applications from the old partition to the new, leaving behind whatever cruft I felt I could live without (I could always get anything I left behind from backups, anyway). Once I was really sure I wanted to stay with Mavericks, I just deleted the old partition and added its space to the new.

Gary

On Oct 29, 2013, at 3:25 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks to both Owen and Marcus for the good reports...  While I've never dreaded an OSX update like I have Winderz major releases, I have always avoided being an early adopter...  I might just take the plunge.

I'm wondering why VM compression hasn't caught on sooner?   Has the physical memory curve kept ahead of it well enough, or is the compute-cost simply too high?

My mother-in-law's 2009 MacBook (not pro) is grinding a lot on VM (mostly from web browsing)... I was going to look into possibly downgrading her Safari/Firefox to an older version that might not be as memory-hungry, or putting in some extra memory... but maybe upgrading her system to Mavericks will provide the needed relief?

Except for the very unfortunate codename "Mavericks" it sounds very promising...  supposedly the name came from a Surf Beach near Half Moon Bay, possibly suggesting "a new wave" in OS...   despite apparently being very similar to Mountain Lion, maybe it *does* portend a "new wave".   One has to wonder "did they just run out of Big Cat names?" in the same way that they are running out of decimal digits (10.9) or does this signify a significant change in direction (gearing up for a big change in 11 and naming after surf beaches for the next generation?).

Sadly I can't hear the term "Mavericks" without hearing it in Sarah Palin's pinched Wasila-Whine of a voice.   I'll try to superpose the image of a young James Garner making some dry, witty remark near the end of a poker game on a riverboat instead.   And who knew that Roger Moore was on that late 50's TV western as cousin Beau Maverick?


Just converted to Mavericks and it seem great.  And the upgrade was free .. not sure why.

Steps:
First
- Clean obsolete kruft from computer.  OmniDiskSweeper (free) is very useful.
  Also look at apps finding old and unused apps especially ones unlikely to run.
  Delete with AppZapper or similar .. need to remove prefs etc.
- Build a Superduper bootable backup.  This is useful both as a fallback, and if you 
  want a clean build, you boot from that and have the installer build on your 
  internal boot disk.  Probably need to clear/format/repair the disk w/ DiskUtil.
- I searched for a "how to migrate to Mavericks" article which included all that
Then
- Go to App Store and download installer (takes quite a while due to size)
- When downloaded, pops up the installer.  You can quit it and install later if you'd like, in Apps folder
- Took quite a while to install as well, but seemed to do a sweet job
- Initially asked for lots of permissions and other transition annoyances, but not bad.
- Smoothest install I've ever had.

   -- Owen


On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
On 7/12/13, 4:08 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable. 
OSX Mavericks now has compression in the virtual memory system.   I've been doing parallel builds all day and I see the Activity Monitor regularly showing 2GB of compressed memory (on an old 4GB 2009 era MacBook Pro).   If that had to hit disk, the system would grind to a halt, but it doesn't.   It seems to work well.

Marcus

P.S. Linux has had this for a while in various forms for a number of years, e.g compcache.

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Re: OSX Memory Management - Apple/Mac FanBois only

Russell Standish-2
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
I gather Mavericks is not available for Snow leopard users?


On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 02:25:01PM -0600, Steve Smith wrote:

> Thanks to both Owen and Marcus for the good reports...  While I've
> never dreaded an OSX update like I have Winderz major releases, I
> have always avoided being an early adopter...  I might just take the
> plunge.
>
> I'm wondering why VM compression hasn't caught on sooner?   Has the
> physical memory curve kept ahead of it well enough, or is the
> compute-cost simply too high?
>
> My mother-in-law's 2009 MacBook (not pro) is grinding a lot on VM
> (mostly from web browsing)... I was going to look into possibly
> downgrading her Safari/Firefox to an older version that might not be
> as memory-hungry, or putting in some extra memory... but maybe
> upgrading her system to Mavericks will provide the needed relief?
>
> Except for the very unfortunate codename "Mavericks" it sounds very
> promising...  supposedly the name came from a Surf Beach near Half
> Moon Bay, possibly suggesting "a new wave" in OS...   despite
> apparently being very similar to Mountain Lion, maybe it *does*
> portend a "new wave".   One has to wonder "did they just run out of
> Big Cat names?" in the same way that they are running out of decimal
> digits (10.9) or does this signify a significant change in direction
> (gearing up for a big change in 11 and naming after surf beaches for
> the next generation?).
>
> Sadly I can't hear the term "Mavericks" without hearing it in Sarah
> Palin's pinched Wasila-Whine of a voice.   I'll try to superpose the
> image of a young James Garner making some dry, witty remark near the
> end of a poker game on a riverboat instead.   And who knew that
> Roger Moore was on that late 50's TV western as cousin Beau
> Maverick?
>
>
> >Just converted to Mavericks and it seem great.  And the upgrade
> >was free .. not sure why.
> >
> >Steps:
> >First
> >- Clean obsolete kruft from computer.  OmniDiskSweeper (free) is
> >very useful.
> >Also look at apps finding old and unused apps especially ones
> >unlikely to run.
> >Delete with AppZapper or similar .. need to remove prefs etc.
> >- Build a Superduper bootable backup.  This is useful both as a
> >fallback, and if you
> >want a clean build, you boot from that and have the installer
> >build on your
> >internal boot disk.  Probably need to clear/format/repair the disk
> >w/ DiskUtil.
> >- I searched for a "how to migrate to Mavericks" article which
> >included all that
> >Then
> >- Go to App Store and download installer (takes quite a while due to size)
> >- When downloaded, pops up the installer.  You can quit it and
> >install later if you'd like, in Apps folder
> >- Took quite a while to install as well, but seemed to do a sweet job
> >- Initially asked for lots of permissions and other transition
> >annoyances, but not bad.
> >- Smoothest install I've ever had.
> >
> > -- Owen
> >
> >
> >On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Marcus G. Daniels
> ><[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
> >
> >    On 7/12/13, 4:08 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> >>    My performance problems were solved (pushed back) with 8MB of
> >>    memory so I'm happy for the moment.  I'm expecting that next time
> >>    I feel like a HD upgrade (the one in it fails, my data hoarding
> >>    and sloppy housekeeping fills it up, or I upgrade to a new
> >>    machine) that SSDs will be much more affordable.
> >    OSX Mavericks now has compression in the virtual memory
> >system.      I've been doing parallel builds all day and I see the
> >Activity
> >    Monitor regularly showing 2GB of compressed memory (on an old 4GB
> >    2009 era MacBook Pro). If that had to hit disk, the system would
> >    grind to a halt, but it doesn't.   It seems to work well.
> >
> >    Marcus
> >
> >    P.S. Linux has had this for a while in various forms for a number
> >    of years, e.g compcache.
> >
> >    ============================================================
> >    FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >    Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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> >
> >
> >
> >
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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