Chosen Solution
I am fairly sure this question has not been asked. I have had a macbook pro in the past that has done this and a current mac pro based system for home theater that loves to use resources and appear to not release them. I understand this has been an issue people have asked about elsewhere, and flushing the " inactive" memory can be done via command line. I just wasn’t exactly satisfied with the answers to this problem i was able to find. My question is with 4GB of RAM for my media center machine it should be enough with Plex, Firefox and thats usually about it, other then some silverlight, python dependent programs also running in the background. Anyway often times i find Plex and Firefox use about what they should……..however after the system has been “up” for a while FREE memory is in a bad way. Leaving me with 50MB of FREE memory or sometimes less and after looking ive been using swap. Inactive memory show over 2GB sometimes and will not free it’s self when the system calls for more resources for current programs, it’s my understanding inactive memory is only a temp hold to store info you may need from recent apps. If that is so then why does my system appear to not do this. True other apps have been launched and quit after having the machine up for several days or weeks…… it just stays on all the time, it’s an HTPC. Still, why the occasional memory management issue? why the “inactive memory” being held for nothing, when current running apps can be starving for resources? Do i really need another 4GB to total 8GB of RAM? ( If so i can do that, but thought i would ask first). Please understand this does not happen all the time, looking for a better understanding of the memory management process for OSX and my options…… This is a long question any input would be appreciated of course and if " buy another 4GB" or a link to something i have not read is the best answer that would be fine.
My machine doesn’t seems to be touching that second set of 4 GB. Our stats are very close on use. If you feel you must just try another 2 GB and see if your machine even gets to them. I’m running 10.6.8 on a 2.8 GHz quad core xeon, 5.5 GB storage on 4 hard drives & two optical. ATI Radeon HD 2600 256 MB on a 24" monitor. Sonnet PCIe USB and Sonnet Ethernet.
