Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:21 pm Post subject: Memory
Since I downloaded and installed 3.0 (two patches ago, I think) NeoOffice apparently does not release RAM when I quit it.
I ran Activity Monitor before starting version 3.0.2 this evening and watched the memory get maxed out. Shut NeoOffice down, and the memory is still maxed--35 MB free out of 4 GB.
Can't re-start NeoOffice because there's not enough free RAM. I'm also running Parallels and several other apps., but earlier versions of NeoOffice worked just fine with all that stuff open.
The only remedy I've found so far is to restart the computer. Is this a NeoOffice problem, or is something screwed up in my Macbook?
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: Memory
THEmax wrote:
Since I downloaded and installed 3.0 (two patches ago, I think) NeoOffice apparently does not release RAM when I quit it.
What you just described is actually impossible. When a Mac OS X application quits, Mac OS X takes back all memory allocated to that application. NeoOffice has no ability to circumvent this Mac OS X behavior.
THEmax wrote:
I ran Activity Monitor before starting version 3.0.2 this evening and watched the memory get maxed out. Shut NeoOffice down, and the memory is still maxed--35 MB free out of 4 GB.
Actually, that indicates that NeoOffice is not the application that is consuming all of your machine's memory. If you click on Activity Monitor's "Real Memory" column in the list of processes, which application's sort to the top of the list? If you quit those applications, do you see the memory usage drop?
THEmax wrote:
Can't re-start NeoOffice because there's not enough free RAM. I'm also running Parallels and several other apps., but earlier versions of NeoOffice worked just fine with all that stuff open.
Parallels is the first place to look. Not only does Parallels use a lot of memory (it loads the entire Windows operating system), but it also uses any memory that your Windows applications use.
If you quit all of your Windows applications, shutdown Windows, and quit Parallels, does your memory usage go down?
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:33 pm Post subject: Re: Memory
It appears to have been a bad file. Here's what I did to find that out:
pluby wrote:
What you just described is actually impossible. When a Mac OS X application quits, Mac OS X takes back all memory allocated to that application. NeoOffice has no ability to circumvent this Mac OS X behavior.
You're probably right. I'm relatively new to the Mac and may not understand what I'm seeing.
pluby wrote:
Actually, that indicates that NeoOffice is not the application that is consuming all of your machine's memory. If you click on Activity Monitor's "Real Memory" column in the list of processes, which application's sort to the top of the list? If you quit those applications, do you see the memory usage drop?
Parallels is the biggest memory user at 0.5 GB and Firefox is second, and so on. NeoOffice no longer appears in the RealMem list. But the total of all real memory allocations is only about half of the installed (and functioning) RAM. I don't understand that.
pluby wrote:
If you quit all of your Windows applications, shutdown Windows, and quit Parallels, does your memory usage go down?
Yes, Parallels closes politely and all of the memory it was using is released.
Aha. So I restarted NeoOffice. It restored one of the two documents that had been open earlier, all text. That worked fine, so I then tried to re-open the other doc, which had a graphic in it. That caused NeoOffice to crash--which seems odd, because that same doc was open earlier this evening and I made no changes to it. ActivityMonitor says NeoOffice is using about 90% of the CPU time and that it's "not responding."
I'll force quit and see what happens.
Got roughly 300 MB back. (Didn't note the exact numbers.)
Now I'll try to restart NeoOffice.
It started and successfully recovered the first document. No indication of the second doc--but probably because I hadn't modified or saved it for several weeks.
Opened an earlier version of the file that caused the crash. It opened just fine--no problems.
So naturally I had to try opening the file that caused the crash--and of course it crashed NeoOffice again, with the same ~90% CPU usage. Forced it to quit again, and all is well.
I don't know what's wrong with that file, but it doesn't get along with NeoOffice any longer.
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:48 pm Post subject: Re: Memory
THEmax wrote:
Parallels is the biggest memory user at 0.5 GB and Firefox is second, and so on. NeoOffice no longer appears in the RealMem list. But the total of all real memory allocations is only about half of the installed (and functioning) RAM. I don't understand that.
I don't have Parallels on my machines, but I believe that Parallels preallocates a lot of virtual memory. Parallels won't initially use that memory so you don't see much usage in the "Real Memory" column, but Mac OS X will reserve that not-yet-used virtual memory by preventing other applications from allocating it.
THEmax wrote:
I don't know what's wrong with that file, but it doesn't get along with NeoOffice any longer.
Since your first post mentions NeoOffice 3.0.2, I assume that you installed NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access that we released today? If so, then I suspect that our new smoother font kerning or native highlighting code is causing this behavior.
Is the document something you can publicly post? If so, can you attach the file using the steps in this post? This will allow us try to reproduce the same behavior on our machines.
If the file contains confidential data and you cannot attach it, then can you use the Activity Monitor application to take a sample of the NeoOffice application when it starts using I high amount of CPU using the steps in this NeoWiki article?
Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:17 am Post subject: Re: Memory
pluby wrote:
Since your first post mentions NeoOffice 3.0.2, I assume that you installed NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access that we released today? If so, then I suspect that our new smoother font kerning or native highlighting code is causing this behavior.
Yes, it's NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 2.
But this morning there's a new wrinkle: I left the Macbook running (cover open) over night and it had freed up some more memory by morning. Sorry, I didn't think to note the numbers. So to be sure I remembered the version correctly, I started NeoOffice. It appeared to be working normally, so I opened the doc that had caused the crashes last night. I expected it to crash again, but it opened normally and I'm able to modify it. So then I opened the other doc, the one that had been open last night when I tried to open the "crash" doc. It opened, too, and now NeoOffice appears to be working just fine.
I'm puzzled--and a bit apologetic, because I can't duplicate last night's crashes.
If you're curious, here's what Activity Monitor says about the biggest apps right now:
Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:44 am Post subject: Re: Memory
THEmax wrote:
I'm puzzled--and a bit apologetic, because I can't duplicate last night's crashes.
Since the crashing stopped when more memory became available, this makes me think that your machine's hard disk is nearly full. What I think is happening is that when Parallels preallocates virtual memory, Mac OS X is creating a matching file on your hard disk (Mac OS X uses your hard disk as a "fallback" memory source).
During launching or opening a file, NeoOffice needs to create some temporary files so if your disk is nearly full, creation of those temporary files may fail and that could cause NeoOffice to hang and use nearly 100% of CPU.
To test my theory, can you Control-click on your Desktop's main volume's icon? In the popup menu that appers, select the Get Info menu. In the window that appears, go to the General section. Can you post what is in the Capacity, Available, and Used fields?
You definitely have plenty of unused disk so lack of disk space is not the problem.
The only other theory that I have is that Windows (from within Parallels) is grabbing a massive amount of virtual memory at some point and it won't immediately release that virtual memory.
The next time that this happens, can you launch the /Applications/Utilities/Terminal application, copy the following command into the Terminal window, press the Return key, and paste the output into this forum topic:
Code:
ls -l /var/vm
This command will tell us the total virtual memory that has been preallocated by Mac OS X. If you are running out of memory, I would I expect that to see the output show several very large files.
If we see very large files and they remain large after quitting Parallels, then some other background application (maybe Parallel's has some background helper applications) is still holding on to that memory and won't give it immediately.
The next time that this happens, can you launch the /Applications/Utilities/Terminal application, copy the following command into the Terminal window, press the Return key, and paste the output into this forum topic:
Will do.
Here's what it gives right now:
Last login: Mon Dec 28 17:27:07 on console
Maxbook:~ Max$ ls -l /var/vm
total 524288
-rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Dec 28 17:26 swapfile0
-rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Dec 29 13:09 swapfile1
-rw------- 1 root wheel 134217728 Dec 29 13:09 swapfile2
Maxbook:~ Max$
I have a lot of stuff running right now, and Activity Monitor shows only around 93 MB of free memory. (It varies slightly.)
Forgot to mention earlier that TimeMachine is running, too. It uses a lot of ram.
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