Another Memory Usage ???

[RobertJonesNYC]

Not sure where to put this, so starting here...

I've got two almost identical systems- 5,1, dual 6 core 2.93, 32mb ram. Both running El Cap .6. Besides installed SW, the only hardware differences are maybe RAM mfg, and hard drive config.

Rendering multiple instances of copies of the same copy AE file via AErender on each. Noticing that one machine doesn't dig into swap memory at all, memory pressure is high, and will lockup when it hits redline.

The other machine jumps right into swap memory, with minimal memory pressure (6%) but renders start slowing down the deeper it digs.

Of course, AfterEffects versions are the same with identical settings.

Does anyone have any insight or a direction to persue?

Thanks In Advance.

 

[Kris Kelvin]

How does the hard drive config differ?
How much free space on the drives?
What's the output if you run the following command in Terminal?

sudo launchctl list | grep com.apple.dynamic_pager

 

[RobertJonesNYC]

Im getting - 0 on both machines with the testing loads

Tons of free space. Both boxes have identical SSD's for system drives. The swap memory box has an extra SSD, but the AE caches for both are on 4TB HD's

 

[Kris Kelvin]

Im getting - 0 on both machines with the testing loads

That's fine. If there's an entry, it means that the dynamic_pager service, which is responsible for swapping, is enabled.

Tons of free space. Both boxes have identical SSD's for system drives. The swap memory box has an extra SSD, but the AE caches for both are on 4TB HD's

AE caching location shouldn't be relevant. Swapping in macOS always happens to the system drive. To be more specific, the swap files should be created here:

/private/var/vm/

Not sure where the problem is. Any suspicious entries in the Console/system log when swapping should begin?

 

[RobertJonesNYC]

nothing to my highly untrained eye. I'm surprised at the different behavior. Besides the behavior of the "high pressure" box (and I may be misinformed) but shouldn't the "no pressure" box at least get above 6-10% for mem pressure seeing as my render processes are utilizing 21-30G of RAM?

 

[Kris Kelvin]

I would think so, yes.

With the following command, you can simulate high memory pressure (takes a while, and won't swap):

sudo memory_pressure -l critical

Are the memory settings in After Effects identical on both machines? These can be found at After Effects > Preferences > Memory > Details.

It might also be worth a try to create a new user on the non-swapping system to run with default settings.

 

[RobertJonesNYC]

Kris-

Thanks for your suggestions. I think at this point, when I have the time i'm going to try to baseline both machines, using the same os drive with a barebones app install for both to test with.

I'll report back when I get there.

I would think so, yes.

With the following command, you can simulate high memory pressure (takes a while, and won't swap):

sudo memory_pressure -l critical

Are the memory settings in After Effects identical on both machines? These can be found at After Effects > Preferences > Memory > Details.

It might also be worth a try to create a new user on the non-swapping system to run with default settings.

 

[h9826790]

So, if you swap the boot drive, the behaviour follow the drive?

 

[RobertJonesNYC]

Unfortunately, I can't just swap the existing drives as there are MAC address sensitive programs on each and can't risk the hassle.

Starting with a fresh drive as noted above when I have a moment

 

[RobertJonesNYC]

Resolved. Long story with some voodoo involved.

TLDR: Reseat RAM, reset PRAM & SMC

Focused at this point on getting the "high-pressure" box to use swap memory so it can be used without crashing renders.

Baselined both boxes... same, existing behavior on both with the single, clean test drive installed after PRAM reset.

Checked systems to make sure they had the same Boot ROM & SMC before I swapped processor trays. Noticed at this point the high-pressure box was reporting a bad RAM module. Recognized it, but reported errors. The "good" box went through Memtest over the weekend, so I swapped RAM. Good box recognized all RAM. High-Pressure recognized all RAM. Same, existing behavior. Did not reset PRAM at this step.

Did a shutdown on high-pressure...would only restart. Upon restart checked RAM. Wasn't seeing two RAM modules. Starting to think it's something with the RAM slots on the high-pressure processor tray. Did a hard shutdown. Skipped a process step and just put in the processor tray from the good box into the high-pressure box. All RAM recognized and checked out OK. Same, existing behavior. Scratched head. Tried shutdown, restart only, so did a SMC and PRAM reset... SUCCESS! With the good processor tray in the high-pressure box after the parameter resets the high-pressure box was rendering with low memory pressure and digging into swap memory

Reseated RAM on high-pressure's tray, reinstalled back into high-pressure. Reset SMC and PRAM and so far all is good. high-pressure is now low-pressure and using swap memory like every other box we've got. Stress testing overnight but very optimistic.

Thanks again for taking the time to offer insights.