guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Recently I installed a second ssd in the optical bay of my 2012 mbp to keep downloads and torrenting separated from my os and programs. But I noticed when I download like 1GB my 'inactive ram' fills up with 1GB too. So with larger torrents all my ram will be used, causing things like video playback in vlc to crash.I have 8GB of ram, so that shouldn't be a problem.To free the inactive memory I can type the 'purge' command in Terminal, but that's far from ideal.When I tried downloading a large file with Transmission there is no problem at all.Apart from this recent issue I like to keep using uTorrent, so is there something I can do or is this a bug in uTorrent?Any help will be much appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Is it actually the utorrent process eating the ram or is it something else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 It's not the utorrent process according to activity monitor (100mb or so).Thing is, this ONLY happens when I'm using uTorrent so I guess it has something to do with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciaobaby Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 SATA HDDs are faster than SSDs on write cycles and using SSDs for the write heavy torrent download will shorten the life of the SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 I don't see what that has to do with the my question.Did the math, even if I write 100gb a day the ssd will last me 20 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciaobaby Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Well if the drive writes are slow and downloads are fast, data has to be cached in memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Then how do you explain that Transmission doesn't do this? Same torrent, same ssd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciaobaby Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Because:uTorrent ≠ Transmission • Transmission ≠ uTorrent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 So first it's the slow writes of the ssd (should be at least 5x faster btw), and when I ask why Transmission doesn't have the same problems it's just because uTorrent is not Transmission.I'm sorry but this is in no way helpful or logical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciaobaby Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 So you don't think there is going to be differences in two different programs written by two different groups of developers?The ONLY thing that the two share is the PROTOCOLHow each developer group implement that protocol is really up to them.It would appear that the developers of Transmission for Mac may have simply created a more efficient cache - disc algorithm than the uTorrent for Mac developers have.Helpful or not, logical or not, that's the way it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 What you're saying is that in my case Transmission works better. This was already clear to me, as you can see in the first post.I just like to keep using uTorrent, that's why I started this topic.Guess I'll have to switch to Transmission for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ciaobaby Posted November 27, 2012 Report Share Posted November 27, 2012 Have you run them independently? Because if BitTorrent is "hogging" the drive write channel it is going to cause any other writes to be delayed and fill any available memory cache that other processes are using. To decide that something is a problem you have to eliminate all other possibles.It may also be a problem with your setting of one or both clients that is allowing memory to be used. As it is only the obvious possibilities that have been looked at, you probably need to do more testing and determine the best settings for both clients on your machine empirically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2012 I've run all tests I could think of, but guess what... The 1.8 update just came in, and it seems to have solved my issues. I'll keep an eye on it, if there are still problems I'll be back here i guess. Thanks for now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitarjoa Posted November 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2012 After playing with it for a while, the update seems to be only half of the solution: downloading doesn't have any effect on inactive memory, but seeding still does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amorpheous Posted December 18, 2012 Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 I got here from Google. I have the same issue using Version 1.8.0 (28575).This is not a caching issue (and if it is, then caching is not implemented properly) and here's why: - I currently have one torrent downloading, no others seeding or downloading. - My Mac has 8GB RAM of which at least half (4GB) was free (green in the Activity Monitor) before I started/resumed the torrent. - I am downloading at between 0 and 250 KBytes/s. - The torrent is being downloaded to a NAS on the local network. - The LAN connection is 1 Gbits/s; no wireless connections - Within half an hour the free RAM on my Mac became inactive (blue) leaving a tiny sliver (~250MBytes) of free RAM - The NAS is capable of writing hundreds of MBs per minute. - The network is not saturated (i.e. no major transfers downloads going on on any other devices or on the Mac itself)I don't believe for a second that uTorrent needs to cache 4GB of data in RAM for one torrent that is downloading at sub-1MBytes/s. Hell, the size of the entire torrent is less than that.Side note - you don't see this issue with uTorrent on Windows. I had the same torrent downloading via my Windows PC to the same location last night and saw no issues with RAM usage (I transferred it over to my Macbook later so that I could leave it running through the night without using the beastly amounts of power my PC consumes).Last but not least, if you run the 'purge' command in the Terminal it will free up any inactive RAM. However, this is really not the optimal solution (I guess you could set up a cron job, but it'd still be a hack/workaround). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frexer Posted December 18, 2012 Report Share Posted December 18, 2012 http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=126118 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smitt Posted January 12, 2013 Report Share Posted January 12, 2013 I have the same issue.MacBook Pro, 4Gb RAM, HDD.uTorrent 1.8.1 (28758)Typically when I run the torrent and starts some downloads, I have about 2Gb of free RAM.Since the downloads started, the free RAM goes into inactive with 1-5MB/s speed.So, by 15-30 minutes is all free RAM become inactive. Then it starts to use SWAP!The Disk Write cache is loaded about 10-30%.And even if I stop the downloads and quit the uTorrent - memory will not be freed!Only reboot or purge command can free the memory (and SWAP) which was filled while uTorrent run Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dantelectro Posted January 15, 2013 Report Share Posted January 15, 2013 Same here, i'm using 1.8.1 (28758). AFAIR i started noticing this around 1.8.It steadily raises inactive at 0.25-0.5 MB/s, even when i'm seeding only, at 40 KB/s. It still happens when nothing much is running along, and it stops when i quit uTorrent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xsashox Posted January 18, 2013 Report Share Posted January 18, 2013 Hi guyz.. I'm using uTorrent on OSX 10.6.8 (SnowLeo) and im having the same issue.. A short term fix is by repairing your disk permissions and the inactive RAM will free up a little bit but not for long.. Im really hoping to get this fixed because its getting on my nerves slowly.. Any expected time for this bug? BR, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldybut Posted January 18, 2013 Report Share Posted January 18, 2013 It's the OS memory management: :roll eyes:Ram is used for cache, as is free space on the HD. Little Snitch shows "servers" connected increases as the assorted tracker/swarm connections are made. More resources are needed to stay on top of that. And yes, you can see dramatic changes when you do something to alter the memory needs of the moment --- but in time the assorted memory allocations do change and wind up with very little "free" memory, with or without uTorrent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dantelectro Posted January 21, 2013 Report Share Posted January 21, 2013 @xsashox Repairing disk permissions is not a solution for insufficient memory. Open Terminal, type purge, that will free up as much memory as possible, without having to reboot. You can do this every time you run out.@oldybut You're regurgitating a general misbelief that running out of memory hourly in OS X is normal and it will resolve itself. It will not, the OS will start paging out to disk and swapping instead of freeing up inactive memory, and that's when everything will get prone to hanging (beachball) and crashing. I have to relaunch Finder if i don't purge before this occurs.uTorrent didn't use to increase used memory this rapidly before and it won't give it back when you quit it (unlike Adobe Audition for example).Inefficient code, bugs, memory leaks — heard of them? Of course blaming it on external factors is much easier than looking into it and fixing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xsashox Posted January 22, 2013 Report Share Posted January 22, 2013 @xsashox Repairing disk permissions is not a solution for insufficient memory. Open Terminal, type purge, that will free up as much memory as possible, without having to reboot. You can do this every time you run out.I'm runing SnowLeo, i dont have the purge command. uTorrent uses my free RAM all the way until none is free and marks it as inactive, i fix it with repairing disk permission i instantly get at least 40% of free RAM back.. This happens in a matter of 2 hours that my free ram just wanishes i have to fix permissions then and it works.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dantelectro Posted February 1, 2013 Report Share Posted February 1, 2013 i fix it with repairing disk permission i instantly get at least 40% of free RAM back.Interesting, it seems this is worse than i thought.Yesterday i was downloading at 2MB/s and inactive was being created rapidly, had to purge about every 30 minutes (i have 8GB of RAM !).Does anyone from the development team pay attention to this thread?... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hogroller Posted February 9, 2013 Report Share Posted February 9, 2013 I am having this problem also. I am running Mountain Lion. As soon as I start a downloading/uploading with uTorrent I start to lose my free ram.My question is, when uTorrent eats up all the free memory, can this be BAD and mess up your torrents at all? And Also, when purging to free up the memory, can this mess up your torrents?Thanks for any info you can give me on this. I am worried about leaving uTorrent on at night because when I wake up it says I only have 20mb of free memory left and I am not sure if this can be bad for my downloads/computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted February 9, 2013 Report Share Posted February 9, 2013 Ram is there to be used, what's going on is that your operating system is allocating the otherwise inactive ram to disk cache.Those of you being obsessive about having as much ram free as possible are taking the bad route with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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