Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Why does it work?' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Why does it work?
Authored by: gedboy on Oct 18, '04 06:54:11AM

jZaw I reckon I have a similar problem. I came across this via the Apple website btw.

G5 1.8 MHz DP with 1.5 GB of RAM running 10.3.5

My G5 has started crashing and needing a force restart in the last three weeks. I at first blamed Safari, then Eyetv but after a system reinstall and archive over the weekend the problem remains. Firefox has crashed it, as has iTunes but it could be any programme at this stage. Everyone is a suspect.

Looking at the Activity Monitor there are a few strange things. Generally I have about 1.1 GB free and almost no page outs. If I run something like Poisoned the giftd process takes 90% of the CPU and Inactive Memory zooms up to about 1 GB, leaving about 17 MB Free. Pageouts start climbing and the G5 hangs after abotu three minutes.

In Safari the same thing happens (except for the outrageous CPU usage) and eventually a hang is caused. Apart from the amazing speed with which Poisoned gobbles up CPU and RAM I can't exactly see a link in what's happening.

Currently Inactive RAM seems to be hovering on about 146 MB, going up AND down by about half a MB so this is cool but I only have Mail and Safari running beyond the normal system processes.

So the only thing I can see on my machine is that for some reason in some circumstances my Inactive RAM goes up until all my RAM is used then memory swapping starts until the system falls over. What is it that prevents Inactive RAM returning to Free RAM, or does that not happen anyway?

I will keep experimenting with combinations of programmes to see if there is an interaction between them that's doing it but this is driving me nuts. I even managed to crash via the Activity Monitor this morning.

In the good old days (last month) I could cheerfully have twenty programmes open and not be bothered.



[ Reply to This | # ]