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 <sasm...@swcp.com> 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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