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In a letter that appears below, reader Chris Foote suggests that the slowdown problems I've been encountering in OS X could be attributable to the Virtual Memory swap files running out of space on my three-quarters full (at startup) 4 GB OS X partition on the Pismo PowerBook. I don't dispute this. Last week, after 9 days of uptime, free space on my OS X partition was down to about 350 MB, although I have to say that was not encountering any frenzied hard drive thrashing. However, switches between programs, or even between open windows or tabs in Safari were getting very sluggish, as were saves and window opening, et al. in Eudora. If I ever reformat the drive in the Pismo (or more likely, replace it with a higher capacity drive), OS X is going to get a lot bigger partition. However, in the meantime, one workaround I've been researching is moving the Virtual Memory swap file to another partition. Not that I have n cavernously empty ones, but the one next door to my OS X partition has 2.55 GB of free space, which is more than double what's unoccupied on the OS X partition. There seem to be divergent schools of thought on how advantageous shifting the swap files to another partition on the sme drive will be. In OS X Power Tools, Dan Frakes says that "One of the advantages of having your swap files on a separate volume -- speed -- is only fully realized if the swap volume actually resides on a separate disk from your operating system, documents, applications, etc. Locating your swap files on a different partition of the same hard drive used as the boot volume will gian you benefits in terms of fragmentation, but will most likely result i a slight decrease in performance..." (due to the drive heads having a longer distance to travel). On the other hand, the developers of SwapSawpVM, a donationware AppleScript utility that does the heavy lifting of shifting the OS X sawp file location for you, say: "Changing your Virtual Memory disk target to a dedicated, fast volume (partition; disk) is loaded with benefits, and has no appreciable drawbacks. "For example, by retargeting your Virtual Memory to another volume, you can free up precious space on your Startup volume (partition; disk), and reduce the frequency of "disk-thrashing", System slowdowns and wake-from-sleep errors (at least those instigated by memory leaks); quite possibly you'll prevent the need to repartition a volume, or reinstall OS X elsewhere, because the current Startup volume is too small for OS X and Virtual Memory, both.... "Those people that claim that OS X will never create more than just one Virtual Memory swapfile equalling 80MB (76.2MB actual) are just plain wrong; if that is true for them, they never use heavy applications or print jobs that generate more memory use than they have installed physical memory capacity." Last weekend, I booted into OS X and ran Norton Speed Disk to defragment my hard drive, and was toying with the idea of using one of the utilities noted below to shift my swap files to the other partition. However, after five days of uptime this week, after defragging the partition, I still have 915 MB of free disk space (down from 1.11 MB on a fresh reboot, so the swap files don't seem to be clogging up nearly as quickly as they had been. We shall see. My inclination and preference is to keep things as simple and as stock OS X as I can, so if defragging more frequently will do the trick, I prefer that as a workaround. However, If I had a machine with a second, faster HD, I can see the swap file shift as a potentially worthwhile speed tweak. Here are several utilities that can simplify the process of shifting OS X Jaguar swap files to another volume:
SwapSwapVM is an AppleScript application made with Smile written to change the target volume (disk; partition) for the Virtual Memory swapfiles in OS X 10.2.x Jaguar. SwapSwapVM requires a default installation of OS X 10.2 through 10.2.6 Jaguar (including BSD) and a minimum 832x624 screen resolution.
Features:
New in this version:
System requirements:
For more information, visit here: Swap Relocator 1.1.2 Tool To Move Swap files Swap Relocator is a Startup Item. On every boot it will kill and relaunch the Darwin Virtual Memory Manager so that the Swap files will be placed in a different (choosen by the user) partition. Disabling Swap Relocator is simple. Just edit the /etc/hostconfig file.
New in this version:
Swap Relocator is freeware
System requirements:
For more information, visit:
Xupport 1.3.2 Utility Xupport is a graphical user interface (GUI) to configure many Mac OS X options, that are hard to configure manually, and more. It includes several unix commands to optimize and secure your Mac, and activates many features that are disabled by default.
• Access hidden system and finder settings
New in this version:
System requirements:
Xupport is $20.00 shareware
For more information, visit:
J. Schrier also has a dedicated freeware utility called Swap Cop that will also do the job, but as I understand it, Swap Cop has not yet been updated to support OS 10.2. I would be interested in hearing from any readers who have used any of these utilities. Adopting OS X on Pepper "owning" your System preferences From Chris Foote Charles: Based on your article today, I think your major problem is that you've installed OS X on too small a partition. If you are running with that little free disk space, the system is going to be thrashing! Many people make the mistake of over partitioning. I really think OS X should be on a 10 GB partition minimum to give it elbow room. I have stopped partitioning at all (of course, I have two drives in my machines). Chris
Hi Chris;
Please see the column above. I'm painfully aware that the 4 GB partition is too small. Back in 2001, when I first installed OS 10.1, it seemed sufficient given that Apple specified 1 minimum 1.5 GB of disk space.
I gave my new iBook 10-12 GB (i'd have to look to be sure) for the OS X partition when I partitioned its drive.
However, a friend of mine has Jaguar installed on a 300 MHz iBook with a 3.2 GB HD. ;-)
Charles From Stephen Ashton Charles I've been enjoying the combined thoughts of you and your readers on adopting OS X recently and thought I'd add my pennyworth. I must confess that by anyone's standards I'm an early adopter. I installed the OS X Public Beta the day it was released and OS X 10.0 became my primary OS the day I got it. I don't have Classic installed on the hard drive (it runs of a disk image when I need it). It's best to up front with the truth: I'm probably a little biased here! I use Mail, surf the web using Safari, write using Word X, manage my Church accounts using Excel X; but the real power of OS X -- the real difference for me -- is made by the little things that I cannot do on another system. I use iPhoto to manage the family photos (although as a user in the UK I'm disappointed that I *still* cannot order books or prints from within the application ... thank goodness for www.bonusprint.co.uk!). I use Keynote for jaw-dropping presentations (that's due to the app, not me!). I use Address Book, iCal and iSync to help manage calendar and contacts across a range of devices (PC at work, Mac at home, Palm Vx, Sony Ericsson T68i, addresses on the .Mac site). I'd use iTunes to buy music if I could in the UK ... Now I know that for some things OS X is slower; I know I've forked out for two new Macs and truckloads of RAM to get the best from OS X; but for me that's the price I've had to pay to get a computer to do things I want it to. I'm comfortable doing this because this OS has got better and better. My only gripe is that I still cannot get the Online Bible for OS X -- it's just been put off again (it was promised for March, then June, now "this summer").
Kind regards
Hi Stephen;
Glad to hear that your personal OS X Odyssey has been a success. While you're waiting for the OS X native Online Bible, have you checked out E-Bible? from:
http://www.conservatives.net/E-Bible/
Charles on Pepper "owning" your System preferences From Bryan Dyck Hi Charles... I just read your comment on how the Pepper text editor had commandeered your preference files, and wanted to offer a solution: If you happen to have the developer tools installed, the default "owner" for .plist files is the Property List Editor in /Developer/Applications. However, since they're just standard XML files, you could also choose to have something like TextEdit "own" them. Either way, you can change the default application for a file type by doing a Get Info on the file, selecting an appropriate application under the Open With section and then hitting the Change All button to make it the default app for all files of that type.
Cheers,
Hi Bryan;
Thanks for the input. I tried changing the default app. in Get Info. The icon changed for that Preference file, and when I check other Preference files with Get Info the "owner" application is now listed as Text Edit, but the icons are still Pepper icons. However, I haven't restarted yet.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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