Huge page outs memory problem!

I have an imac running sl with 4gb of ram. Suddenly, the system started running really slow - no update or anything, just after powering on this morning.

In activity monitor, the free ram dissapears after a few seconds to 5 - 8 mb and the remainder is mostly taken up with an active state. This is without me starting any programmes up.

Also, straight away the page in and outs start rising - its been about 5 minutes now and theyre both on about 5gb already. I repeat, im not starting up any programmes!

Can anyone help?

Oh yeah, VM is on 121gb also. Seems a little large!?

Also, sitting here watching the activity monitor, it seems every few minutes the majority of the pie chart goes green but then fills up again with yellow.

What does Activity Monitor show is using all the RAM when it fills up?

Heres a screen so you can see whats running.

bobtomay said:

What does Activity Monitor show is using all the RAM when it fills up?

Click to expand...

Nothing as such?!

What Native instruments app are you running?

There are also issues with Apogee's Duet and Lion.

Open up Applications / Utilities / Console and see what the logs are indicating.

(That's about the cleanest looking Activity Monitor I've ever seen. I have about 3 pages of stuff all the time. And that VM number is always extremely large. Mine is sitting at 190+GB currently)

There seems to be a lot of this;

23/07/2011 13:56:52 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10041cab0.mach_init.mdworker[286]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error

23/07/2011 13:56:52 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[285] 2011-07-23 13:56:52.687 ReportCrash[285:1407] Saved crash report for mdworker[286] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/mdworker_2011-07-23-135652_localhost.crash

23/07/2011 13:56:58 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10041cab0.mach_init.mdworker[288]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error

23/07/2011 13:56:58 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[285] 2011-07-23 13:56:58.328 ReportCrash[285:2907] Saved crash report for mdworker[288] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/mdworker_2011-07-23-135658_localhost.crash

23/07/2011 13:57:03 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10041cab0.mach_init.mdworker[289]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error

23/07/2011 13:57:03 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[285] 2011-07-23 13:57:03.660 ReportCrash[285:380b] Saved crash report for mdworker[289] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/mdworker_2011-07-23-135703_localhost.crash

Well, those are all spotlight... with a bus error.

Perhaps some external drive or device that it's trying to index and is not connected to your machine currently.

I had to go into mine and re-add all the locations and drives I didn't want it indexing. The Lion upgrade had removed all of my previous Spotlight preferences. It was even indexing my TM backup - for what I ask?

And I welcome any other thoughts out there.

You absolutely right, thanks!

mdworker was trying to index an external drive. I dont know why afetr a year this has started causing problems but ive moved it into the spotlight privacy pane now and all is well.

Cheers!

Glad that was it, because I wouldn't have been much more help.

Hi guys.
I have just jumped into the same problem (again), and it happened (again) after I updated my Audio Kontrol 1 from Native Instruments. (It seems to happen everytime I update something from NI, and because I need to work, I used Time Maschine and went back to a date when it was working). I imagined that updating the Audio Kontrol would not afftect it but it did.

I also ran a TM backup last night, and now when I connect it, it starts to do a backup of the whole drive...?

MAybe I should leave the mdworker and let it finish? I have put a drive that it intended to index into the privacy and error messages stopped, but mdworker still works full speed.

Any ideas?.

Thanks.
Robert.

A temorary solution that seems to work is putting the internal HD i Privacy of SPotlight, kind of puts the whole Spotlight thing to waste. Many people seems to htink that it is a Lion problem, I am still on SNow, to me it seems to be a problem with program that is Lion compatible. Thats why I ran into the same thing several times when trying to upgrade to last version of Reaktor, Massive etc. from Native I.

R.

currentmusik said:

Any ideas?.

Click to expand...

Please read the "Beachballs" link in my signature...it may help.

- Nick

Hi Nick.
I do restart my computer at least once a day, I also see that mdworker is crashing a lot. I also postively sure that I have enough ram (A new i7 Pro with 4 gigs), and its starts after updating my Native Instrument applications....weird. I have tried it like 3-4 times now, since I obviously want to have the latest updates, but everytime I have gone back to and earlier date (with TM) and it solve the problem.

Hoping for a sloution of course, but...I need my daw up and running.

R.

Ok, so I left it on all night and it seems that Spotlight indexed the whole drive again and its working fine... No idea why it needed that just because I updated my aduio card, Ive been working for hours recording in Logic without any problems.

:-D
R.