>9Gb Swap files

aaike

aaike

bacteria-troubled-brain
I always keep my computer on and I use quite a lot of apps, but 9Gb is a lot imo. At a certain point I couldn't do much because the disk was full (my Os X partition is only 20 Gb)... So I had to restart to clear the vm (loging out and back in didn't help...). Also, my dock-settings were lost...
I also have to admit that I used some beta apps: DockExtender 3.0 and (of course) Safari. Does anyone have a clue what caused this?
 
You must have a BIG problem. Really ! With only 128RAM at a time, I had 70M swap files, not more ! 9G is inconceivable, that's a record to me !!!

Zap it, check the RAM is normally installed, trash any SWAP managers but OSX, well, make the computer clean. I advise a complete reinstall, something has gone very wrong there...

J'arrive pas à y croire. 9 Gigas de SWAP, c'est inhumain...
 
Your SWAPFILE should only be about 78Mb - 100MB under normal usage. If it get into the 200 - 300Mb range, it is due to an app not clearing it's Virtual Memory cache (Suitcase 10 is guilty of this when previewing lots of fonts rapidly).

I have a dedicated swap partition of 500Mb, and it works very well, and is never filled.
 
Before reinstalling! I'll watch what happens after the restart I did, because everything seems fine by now...
I don't have suitcase btw...
 
Umm.. you mean you have 9 gig's of swap files, or do you have a 9 gig swap file.

Because OS X currently writes out swap files in 80MB increments. So if you have a 9gig swap file, something is very very wrong.
 
I ment swap files... But still 9 gig seems a lot. At the moment I don't see the problem anymore, but I still have the impression that the vm is growing
 
The vm is indeed increasing again (now somewhere above 3 Gig's). Does anyone have an idea how i can TRACE which app is not clearing the vm cache (I am not affraid of using the terminal btw...).
 
I experience this vm growth too. Though my vm just grows to 1.5 or 2GB.
I have a TiBook and i normally never reboot it (only if it has to after some software installs/updates). I also had this after a reinstall and just using the apps that come with jaguar.
It seems that the vm stays quite "low" for the first 2-3 days (maybe a week) after a reboot...
 
Marwin: could you solve the problem, or do you still experience it?
Maybe 1 gig is still in the 'normal' range, but I have 1 Gb Ram + vm that grows to more than 9 Gb... I don't really consider that as normal and think tere has to be a problem with memory refreshment with an app.
 
I havent solved it. Well, as i dont run out of HD space i didnt care about it. Only thing i experience is that sometimes (very rarely) the app im using hangs, then i hear the HD and it seems as if its doing some vm-stuff then. After that the vm-size is a bit lower normally...
And i never experienced such a hugh vm use. Well, i consider 1.5GB much vm but as it doesnt seem to increase to infinity i can live with it.
I normally just use some browser, chat clients, office apps... i could understand the vm size >1GB if i would do graphics stuff...

Marwin
 
Originally posted by Ricky
Quick question: How do you change the drive or partition that OS X writes swap files to?
Click to expand...
Quick answer: Swap Cop
Although some folks say it doesn't work in Jaguar, I have successfully used it on 2 different iMacs.
 
well, there are written directions on www.bombich.com that will help you out a wee bit. I will move my swap to it's own partition, and meddle with filesize (80MB is quite a chunk, considering a situation when you only need say 90MB, it takes out two vm-files, total 160MB)
 
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