[HN Gopher] Monterey's memory leak and how to avoid it
___________________________________________________________________
Monterey's memory leak and how to avoid it
Author : llimllib
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-11-15 14:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eclecticlight.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (eclecticlight.co)
| pwthornton wrote:
| This explains why the behavior is so inconsistently seen. I
| haven't seen it on my three macs and others have had their
| systems crippled by it.
| garblegarble wrote:
| The title incorrectly implies implies this is the only bad memory
| leak in Monterey (even though the author acknowledges it's not
| the only in an edit complaining about 'comment bombing').
|
| While the pointer one may be the worst culprit, it's definitely
| not the only one - every few days I see Control Center using >3GB
| (once force-killed, it goes back down to 26MB). It's not a
| massive issue on my machine (I just check memory usage every day)
| but it gives a very bad impression that Apple haven't fixed it
| yet.
|
| I'm sure is especially challenging for non-technical users who're
| more likely to be on a lower-memory system and run out of memory
| regularly
| sys_64738 wrote:
| What is "Control Center"? I don't have such an app on my system
| running Monterey.
| DavidPP wrote:
| You made me check only me end, and indeed Control Center was
| sitting at 5.19gb.
| heartbreak wrote:
| I think the workaround for the Control Center leak is to turn
| off Airplay target mode in System Pref -> Sharing and then
| restart (kill) the CC process.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > it gives a very bad impression that Apple haven't fixed it
| yet.
|
| This suggests that it's a common or even universal problem, but
| are you sure that's the case? I've never seen Control Center
| use an inordinate amount of memory -- it may very well be a
| rare or unique issue.
|
| edit: I see someone else ran into it -- fair enough! Still, I
| think it's funny how often I see "I keep running into this bug,
| why haven't they fixed it!" on HN, considering how software
| developers should know, better than anyone, how often bugs are
| hard-to-reproduce edge cases.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| >I think it's funny how often I see "I keep running into this
| bug, why haven't they fixed it!" on HN, considering how
| software developers should know, better than anyone, how
| often bugs are hard-to-reproduce edge cases.
|
| We (software engineers) usually aren't any better than other
| customers despite having the same issues ourselves.
|
| Everyone ships bugs that seem obvious in retrospect. Everyone
| has some small % of customers who hit a bug yet scream loudly
| about how terrible quality is and how stupid we are for
| shipping something so obvious. Everyone has had to make last-
| minute calls "fix or ship?", knowing that every accepted fix
| has a chance of introducing a new potentially worse bug.
| Anyone who deals with hardware understands what delaying
| software can mean.
|
| If you haven't experienced these things then you just haven't
| operated at large scale yet.
|
| IMHO I think it is perfectly fine. When you're the customer
| complain about whatever bothers you. That's valuable
| feedback.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > IMHO I think it is perfectly fine. When you're the
| customer complain about whatever bothers you. That's
| valuable feedback.
|
| I mean sure, but you just said yourself how irrational it
| is. I think it's possible to complain without acting
| entitled about it.
| throwntoday wrote:
| I've seen enough people talking about it that I don't believe
| it is unique.
|
| I check my activity a couple times a day, and there doesn't
| appear to be any correlation between use and control center
| randomly taking >1GB of memory. I could for instance check
| when all apps are closed and it's memory usage is high but
| then after a long day of work it's still floating around
| 30MB. I'm baffled at what the issue actually is but control
| center appears to be processing a lot more data now as all
| media seems to pass through it in some way.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Control Center is also built using SwiftUI I believe.
| SwiftUI still has a lot of rough edges especially on Macs,
| I wonder if that's the issue?
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Is the background apps closed as well? I wonder if you have
| a background app that are constantly using or interacting
| with the system that Command Center need to keep it
| updated? Honestly, I am just throwing out possible idea.
|
| I recalled there was an issue with Google Play service
| consuming higher usage than other apps when Play is not in
| focus. Turns out it is apps that are using Google Play
| services for GCD or GSM, causing wake lock issues. The
| reason why they are seeing the higher usage because the
| Google Play services is the one that are interacting with
| the system and the network and it is the third party app
| that initiate the call which put Google Play service as
| scapegoat. Unfortunately, Android phone does not have a way
| to separate them.
|
| I wonder if this also applies in macOS. I remember I had a
| issue with Windows service that are consuming a high cpu
| usage which is abnormal. I ran malware and antivirus
| scanning and come up clean. It still didn't explain why the
| service is so high. So I used ProcMon (Process Monitor) to
| keep a log of what is interacting with the service. It took
| me a while to filter it out because it have 100 new entries
| every second for that service. Found out it that third
| party app that are hitting the service hard, I assume the
| app was misbehaving and caused this. So I force closed the
| app and restart it, it went back to normal.
|
| I wonder if macOS have process monitor for checking this
| out?
| mzs wrote:
| source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345#c18
|
| ---
|
| Markus Stange [:mstange]
|
| Comment 18 * 1 month ago * Edited
|
| I've filed FB9704004 about this. -[NSCursor
| set] appears to be leaking images, causes 70GB leak in Firefox
| This appears to be a regression in one of the recent macOS
| Monterey Betas. Two Firefox users reported a very
| large memory usage. We're tracking this in
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345 . We
| have a memory report which blames the allocations on this stack:
| #02: _malloc_zone_malloc[/usr/lib/system/libsystem_malloc.dylib
| +0x1e770] #03: createImageWithSizeRenderInstructions[/Sys
| tem/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AccessibilitySupport.framework/Vers
| ions/A/Frameworks/AccessibilityFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Ac
| cessibilityFoundation +0x7430] #04:
| -[_AXFMouseCursorGeneratorLayer _createImageForScale:color:][/Sys
| tem/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AccessibilitySupport.framework/Vers
| ions/A/Frameworks/AccessibilityFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Ac
| cessibilityFoundation +0x66e0] #05:
| -[_AXFMouseCursorGenerator createImageForScale:][/System/Library/
| PrivateFrameworks/AccessibilitySupport.framework/Versions/A/Frame
| works/AccessibilityFoundation.framework/Versions/A/AccessibilityF
| oundation +0x5064] #06: -[_AXFMouseCursorGenerator _regis
| terWithName:connection:isGlobal:setActive:seed:][/System/Library/
| PrivateFrameworks/AccessibilitySupport.framework/Versions/A/Frame
| works/AccessibilityFoundation.framework/Versions/A/AccessibilityF
| oundation +0x5418] #07: _AXFCursorSetAndReturnSeed[/Syste
| m/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AccessibilitySupport.framework/Versio
| ns/A/Frameworks/AccessibilityFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Acce
| ssibilityFoundation +0x70b8] #08: _AXInterfaceCursorSetAn
| dReturnSeed[/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framew
| ork/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Versions/A/HIServi
| ces +0x2d1d8] #09: -[NSCursor _reallySet][/System/Library
| /Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/AppKit +0x1e01d0]
| #10: -[NSCursor set][/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/
| Versions/C/AppKit +0x1e0050] Firefox calls
| -[NSCursor set] very frequently during mouse motions, so many
| leaked images might accumulate.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > There was no significant change in memory used by WindowServer
| (3.37 GB)
|
| Isn't that high for WindowServer? I haven't seen mine over 1GB.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I recently ran into a memory leak in Mojave (Mail was consuming
| 49 GB of RAM), so I finally upgraded to Monterey. The memory leak
| is gone, but now I'm seeing incredible CPU usage in Mail (1/2 to
| 3/4 of my MBP's total resources, while Mail is idle).
|
| I called AppleCare and they said they are aware of the problem
| and will be fixing it in an upcoming release.
| officeplant wrote:
| It's an improvement from Mail occasionally causing grey screens
| of death on M1 machines in Big Sur.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Seeing all the comments here I'm asking myself once more how
| people can bear such crappy products. Especially as the products
| are overpriced on any reasonable scale.
|
| With a stock Linux you _never_ see anything even close to all
| those catastrophes.
|
| I'm not aiming at a OS flame but honestly question how this is
| bearable to otherwise mostly reasonable people. Is there a true
| core to this Stockholm syndrome meme about Apple users? Why are
| people using obviously extremely broken stuff, especially as it
| costs at least one-third more than perfectly fine working stuff?
| I just don't get that. Honestly!
| dundarious wrote:
| I have a standard AMD CPU+GPU, and Manjaro has spontaneously
| rebooted (the hardest of crashes) at least 10 times in the last
| 2 years. I use Windows 10 on this machine about 10 times more
| often and in the same time-frame it has crashed _maybe_ once.
|
| My first Linux install was Mandriva in 2001, followed quickly
| by Slackware, then Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!OS and now I pretty much
| exclusively use Arch and Manjaro. I'm pretty sure that in all
| those 20 years, every time I use up almost all my RAM, the
| system becomes entirely unusable, to the point where I can't
| even interact enough to kill programs, and not even the OOM
| saves the system from total lockup, so I need to power off and
| on. I've _never_ had this experience on Windows. It gets slow,
| but it can recover.
|
| The only time where Windows (kernel) was less reliable for me
| than Linux, as a desktop user, was when I had Windows Millenium
| Edition -- when my journey all began.
|
| I'd still say I prefer Linux, but it's largely because it's
| better for my work on systems software. It's definitely not
| nicer to use as a desktop if you hate crappy products and like
| good ones.
| still_grokking wrote:
| That's once more not an answer to my question...
|
| Regarding spontaneously reboots: I never ever experienced
| this on Linux besides once having a hardware defect. (I would
| check the RAM in your case first; Manjaro is an Arch
| derivative so it incorporates the latest SW but it's not so
| terribly unstable that it would crash every two month I
| guess; not sure of course. I'm avoiding Arch for exactly the
| reason not being stable enough cause it's extremely fresh
| SW).
|
| Regarding the unresponsiveness on low memory: That's an known
| problem caused by a live-lock in the kernel. It has a few
| solutions by now. Just have a look at Facebooks oomd (or one
| of the solutions working in a comparable way):
|
| https://facebookmicrosites.github.io/oomd/docs/overview
| lmilcin wrote:
| I have been using Linux since last millennium and I can tell
| you there is no shortage of bugs.
|
| Just right now I am fighting my Fedora upgrade and Pipewire
| systems that are constantly reverting my custom configuration
| that I wrote to prevent automatically suspending audio to my
| external DAC. On a normal audio output it does not matter when
| your audio stops sending analog signal, but mine is connected
| over Toslink. When the signal stops the DAC on the other side
| also shuts down. Then when the sound gets back it takes time
| for it to turn on again (2s of silence + 2s of slow volume ramp
| up) which is extremely annoying. This happens by default after
| 30s of inactivity.
|
| Unfortunately, Pipewire developers seem to be having some
| pretty strange ideas about how to work with user configuration
| (basically, don't care about it).
|
| I had custom configuration and then it got overriden when they
| decided to move configuration from /etc to somewhere in /usr.
| Then I edited in /usr but it got overriden by fedora update
| system the next time it has been updated (I guess I could have
| predicted it). Then I followed documentation and edited in my
| $HOME/.config but apparently this also stopped working
| yesterday.
|
| And I just want to keep my audio working. Don't get me started
| on graphics or dev environment.
|
| See, no shortage of frustration there...
| still_grokking wrote:
| I'm also using Linux since the last millennium. I can't
| confirm such issues.
|
| Using Fedora means using _experimental_ stuff. Pipewire for
| example is not ready for prime time, so it has obviously
| issues. Simple as that.
|
| But I don't say of course Linux is without bugs. Never seen
| any more complex software without bugs... The point is how
| grave those bugs are and how they could possibly pass QA.
| Especially Apple has a comparably simple job here as they
| only support officially a hand full of products which are
| even build by themself.
|
| And it's not only me who sees one catastrophe following the
| other at Apple. Just have a look at the discussion thread on
| the other current front page topic:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229881
|
| To repeat my question: How do people bear that? That's what I
| just can't understand.
|
| Again, I'm not interested in an OS flamewar. That Apple's
| products are subpar is a fact at this point, and we don't
| need to discuss that again. (Just follow the other HN
| thread). The question is why people are still using this
| stuff and not voting with their wallet (especially as it
| would make their wallet more happy).
| zsmi wrote:
| > Again, I'm not interested in an OS flamewar. That Apple's
| products are subpar is a fact at this point
|
| That second sentence seems like it was specifically crafted
| to start a flame war to me. You don't even mention on what
| dimensions Apple products are subpar. All possible ones I
| presume?
| still_grokking wrote:
| No it wasn't.
|
| Please just have a look at the linked evidence, which
| happens to be another discussion form the current front
| page.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I'm getting one of the new macs because the hardware seems
| great. I got one around the turn of the century for the same
| reason (and mostly ran linux on it.)
| still_grokking wrote:
| That's a valid reason, I guess.
|
| But the current hardware only works with that crappy Apple
| software. So even the HW would be nice it's mostly unusable
| by now.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Desktop Linux is absolutely riddled with bugs unless you have a
| suitably generic hardware configuration and even then you will
| very likely still have problems with:
|
| - Audio
|
| - Wifi
|
| - Bluetooth
|
| - External monitors
|
| - Suspend/Resume and power management in general
|
| - many other things
|
| I abandoned it years ago. I just don't have time for that
| anymore.
| still_grokking wrote:
| I didn't ask why you don't use Linux. (Additionally I can't
| confirm any of the claimed problems; using Linux as a daily
| driver for more than 20 years. All the mentioned things just
| work OOTB since many, many years).
|
| I asked why people are using an utterly broken OS where even
| most basic stuff like memory management is defect. (Not even
| asking how this could possibly pass any QA)...
|
| Even if you think Linux isn't better, it can't be worse!
|
| But Linux is free. (And actually doesn't have most of the
| problems Apple has with even it's _own_ hardware).
|
| So it's valid to ask how people bear using a broken system
| and even paying for it more than elsewhere.
|
| And to repeat myself form an answer given previously: That
| Apple's software is utterly broken and you won't find
| anything worse in the market is a fact at this point. Please
| just follow the other front-page discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229881
| josephg wrote:
| > Even if you think Linux isn't better, it can't be worse!
|
| It could be! The truth is complicated. I've been using a
| ryzen desktop running mint for the last year and I just got
| a M1 pro. I love both of these machines and I still don't
| know which I want to be using as a daily driver. (Well, now
| mint is set up how I like).
|
| These macos bugs are real - and they feel like amateur hour
| junk. As well as the memory leak I'm also running into a
| bug on my M1 where WindowServer idles at 100% cpu after
| I've been using my computer for awhile. I have no idea what
| it's doing or what causes it, but the only way to fix it is
| a reboot. (Or kill -9 the process, which logs me out and
| closes all my programs anyway).
|
| But Linux's bugs are different. I haven't rebooted my Linux
| machine in ages. But on linux I'm annoyed by other things.
| Lots of programs have broken smooth scrolling. Keyboard
| shortcuts for moving the cursor around are inconsistent. I
| can't use the Meta key in intellij as a modifier for some
| reason - so I can't use my muscle memory shortcuts (and the
| ctrl+shift+C is _awful_ as a copy shortcut in xterm!). I
| use a trackpad on my desktop and the sensitivity is way off
| - so i get misclicks all the time. App distribution is a
| mess - flatpak, snap, apt, custom dpkgs and manual make /
| make install? All of the above? I accidentally ended up
| with 2 copies of discord installed and didn't know which
| one was "right".
|
| Linux does the core engineering work right but often falls
| down in frontend UX. (Its definitely getting better these
| days though). Apple makes nice UX but their core
| engineering is remarkably buggy. Apple please - I know you
| think the market wants a new OS every year with new
| features. You don't need a new font every year to compete
| with cheap plastic x86 laptops. Please slow down and fix
| your shit.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Thanks! That's the second reasonable answer I've got
| until now.
|
| It guess the distinction in "core engineering" and UX is
| valid and helpful.
|
| Adapting my point to it: Even the UX may be inconsistent
| or even outright broken the resulting system is at least
| somehow usable. If the core of a system is a tire-fire
| nothing can work, and it makes no difference any more
| whether you have the nicest UX or not.
|
| One hint regarding the awful shortcuts: You could try to
| switch CTRL and ALT or META. That's even a common "one
| click" setting supported usually OOTB by the desktops.
| Swapping those keys was the one truly right decision
| regarding usability by Apple, which I welcome even not
| liking the rest of the macOS UX.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > That Apple's software is utterly broken and you won't
| find anything worse in the market is a fact at this point.
|
| No, it isn't, and even repeating it once more doesn't make
| it any more true.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I should have expected "it works for me" to be the go-to
| reply about why desktop linux is still terrible after all
| these years.
|
| The web browser is pretty much the best thing that ever
| happened to linux users because now their $favorite_distro
| is actually a viable desktop platform.
| still_grokking wrote:
| It may be "terrible"1 (even it works for me, and a lot of
| other just fine) but it's not broken beyond usability at
| least! And even if it would be as broken as macOS it's
| free and supports much more hardware--compared to
| something where you pay even a premium to be bound to
| only one vendor.
|
| So the main question remains.
|
| 1 https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.
| for.t...
| bkanber wrote:
| My stock Ubuntu LTS desktop crashes all the time, about 3x a
| week. Still can't figure out why.
|
| I love linux, have used 4 different distros as my daily driver
| for the last 15-20 years or so. Yet still my linux-using
| friends and I have this joke: 'but will it hibernate?'
|
| And to answer your question directly:
|
| > Why are people using obviously extremely broken stuff
|
| a) it's not obvious and b) it's not extreme. Apple products
| work smoothly for most people most of the time. We're on hacker
| news where the _entire point_ of this forum is the selection
| bias around tech stories like this.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Have you considered a hardware defect? Even Ubuntu doesn't
| crash the whole time. Also you see usually at least some
| obvious reason in the logs if it's software related.
|
| Regarding the "extremely broken stuff": I came here from
| another thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229881
|
| I couldn't help to post the above after also seeing what's
| described here. (Given all the down-votes maybe not the
| smartest idea, but I honestly couldn't help :-)).
|
| The problems are in my opinion indeed extreme and by now the
| mess gets undeniable even to die-hard fans.
|
| What makes me really scratch my head is why otherwise
| reasonable people don't vote with their wallet and still buy
| this things (even at a premium!).
| zsmi wrote:
| > With a stock Linux
|
| What is a stock Linux?
|
| Want to be amazed. Check this out:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions
|
| I mean, there are family trees...
| still_grokking wrote:
| > What is a stock Linux?
|
| Anything considered stable.
|
| I wanted to avoid OS flamewar so I wasn't too specific. But
| we are already there I fear...
|
| Nobody it answering my question. Instead people point out
| Linux isn't without bugs either. Even I never claimed that.
|
| It's without almost daily catastrophes. That's a big
| difference!
| zsmi wrote:
| >>> With a stock Linux you never see anything even close to
| all those catastrophes. >> What is a stock Linux? >
| Anything considered stable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(logic)
| fragmede wrote:
| It refers to a default install of any mainstream
| distribution, with few modifications. Eg you're bound to run
| into problems if you're running some strange window manager
| with a funky desktop. By comparison, I'd expect a base
| install with Gnome to mostly just work. Which it does with
| supported hardware. eg _arandr_ (/whatever the GUI tool is)
| works fine for arranging monitors.
| sneak wrote:
| Extremely broken is not an apt description. It's mostly minor
| annoyances, and they usually get fixed over time if they affect
| enough people. Apple isn't 100% unresponsive.
|
| Linux is equally, or perhaps more broken in many ways.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| The problem is that you're taking a relatively small selection
| of comments--usually only posted by people who have experienced
| a problem--and extrapolating an overall picture from it that's
| probably not that reflective of reality.
|
| I use both Linux and MacOS roughly the same amount day-to-day.
| My experience is that they suffer from various niggly failures
| and issues to roughly the same extent in practice. I've had the
| Mac sometimes lose Bluetooth connections and need lots of
| switching things on-and-off to work, in the same way I've had
| NetworkManager drop off wifi with no apparent explanation. Or
| PulseAudio suddenly deciding to use all my my CPU. Or weird
| lock screen bugs galore!
|
| The products are broadly fine and functional, priced somewhat
| higher than commodity equivalents but in exchange for benefits
| which are worth it for some people and not others. I would
| gently encourage you to consider that other people likely
| aren't idiots and are generally making decisions based on their
| requirements, which in some cases will not match yours!
| still_grokking wrote:
| Thanks! First more reasonable answer that doesn't go into OS
| flamewars.
|
| > I would gently encourage you to consider that other people
| likely aren't idiots and are generally making decisions based
| on their requirements, which in some cases will not match
| yours!
|
| That's the core of my question actually! I spelled it even
| out. I just don't get why reasonable people would buy such
| things.
|
| I'm actually not sure the amount of trouble is the same on
| average: I'm not reading almost everyday about some obscure
| catastrophes on Linux (like not working memory management
| like here, not working mouse or keyboard, not working USB,
| not working monitors, etc.). The other thing is Apple
| supports only a fraction of the hardware Linux does. It
| actually seems they don't do any QA. All that broken stuff
| shouldn't ever reach end-customers. Especially as mostly all
| that has to be done is to test against their own products.
| prewett wrote:
| I switch to macOS after successive updates of Ubuntu caused
| audio to be a pain in the neck (due to PulseAudio), no longer
| waking from sleep, and wifi not working. This was quite a while
| ago. Audio still doesn't work by default on my Ubuntu 18
| system.
| mattl wrote:
| Seeing this on latest Big Sur too.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Perhaps Apple should switch to a programming language with a
| garbage collector.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Apple uses Swift. Swift uses ARC which is a kind of garbage
| collector (the naive and eager reference counting kind).
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I can write you a memory leak in any language you want. No GC
| strategy can solve that as doing so is equivalent to solving
| the halting problem (at least that's my intuition).
| tylerhou wrote:
| It's not equivalent; you can tag every pointer with a special
| bit. Then statically you know the accessible roots at every
| instruction pointer value, and you can simply traverse
| accessible memory regions, following tagged pointers. Free
| all memory that is not visited.
|
| A decision problem equivalent to the halting problem might be
| (depending on the language): does this code free all
| allocated memory correctly (assuming no garbage collector)?
| jshier wrote:
| It's still unclear whether these are actual leaks (orphaned
| references), unconstrained growth, or deallocated memory whose
| blocks haven't been reclaimed by the OS. Automatic memory
| management would only help with the first case, and both Obj-C
| and Swift have it by default. Of course, it's entirely possible
| that the sources of these leaks are written in another language
| (C++ is fairly common) or Obj-C with ARC turned off (if that's
| even still allowed within Apple).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If true on causes, how did this get through QA?
|
| A new feature, that when used leaks memory, in any application
| that changes the cursor between pointer and something else
| frequently.
| dagmx wrote:
| Memory leaks tend to be difficult to capture in most QA
| settings.
|
| You'd have to be running a build for significantly longer than
| most people run their QA test suite for, focusing on specific
| actions.
|
| Unless the memory leak ratcheted up memory use immediately,
| it's going to be hard to detect as a result.
| josephg wrote:
| This is why tools like valgrind are indispensable. You can
| run your target process through your test suite with valgrind
| (or apple's Instruments) and it'll tell you if _any_ memory
| leaked. Even if it's just a few bytes.
| tylerhou wrote:
| I don't know if Valgrind (or Clang msan) would catch this
| bug as it might not be associated with any calls to
| *alloc/mmap/free/etc. Seems like a kernel issue, and I
| don't know if Valgrind has the capability to peer that
| deep.
| lordnacho wrote:
| There's more than one way to leak memory though.
|
| One way is the classic where you get memory from an OS
| call, and then you lose the pointer to it. Valgrind will
| then correctly tell you that there's this memory that your
| app can no longer access.
|
| But you can also simply use more and more memory without
| losing track of where it is. Say you have some function
| that gets a new piece of memory and then stores the
| pointer, again and again. Such a program isn't leaking
| memory in the classic sense, but it's still using more and
| more memory. Your tool won't know that this isn't supposed
| to be happening.
|
| IIRC a common way to leak memory the second way is in GC'ed
| programs where for instance you might have a closure that
| owns the pointer, thus the GC when it's marking the objects
| does not think it needs to clean up the object at the next
| sweep.
| lupire wrote:
| That's usually called a space leak, distinguishing space-
| wasting program logic from explicit memory mismanagement.
| Users of a program generally can't distinguish space leak
| from memory leak, unless you inspect the heap to look for
| growing chains or pools of similar objects.
| sa1 wrote:
| I got my first (Your computer has run out of memory) warnings
| recently on an Intel Mac (MBP 2015), during normal laptop usage.
| My pointer settings are already the default. Maybe the laptop is
| already too old for Monterey.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It's possible that changing the pointer setting and changing it
| back could help.
|
| It is also possible that your MBP is too old to run Monterey
| smoothly. I've noticed that my 2017 MBP (base model CPU) is
| noticeably slower with common tasks like spotlight.
|
| I'm sure apple is optimizing for their own chips these days,
| and they don't mind if this results in worse performance on
| Intel machines. It'll speed up the upgrade cycle, which is good
| for them (and bad for us).
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29142157 - Nov 2021 (727
| comments)
| duffyjp wrote:
| I'm on an intel iMac with Big Sur and 48GB of ram. I've had this
| memory leak plague my system at least half a dozen times.
|
| I just checked and I'm one notch up from "normal" on the cursor
| size.
|
| I tried setting it back but it's just too damn small on this 27"
| 5K display. I guess I'll just crash for the time being.
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