Avast Mac Memory Use

Mac · 2007-11-15T05:04:56.000Z

Memory use seems kind of high.

Nearly 60MB on PowerPC:
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb36/barkerkr/Leopardavast.png

Around 50MB on Intel:
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb36/barkerkr/Intelavast.png

zilog · 2007-11-15T11:21:45.000Z

Hallo,
that’s quite normal that after scanning many files the address space might get “polluted” a bit and the memory footprint might become larger - because all scanned objects are either mmap()-ed, or their (extracted) parts are malloc()-ed.

The 500MB size (not 50-60MB as stated - that’s normal) is, indeed, too much - normally there might be some compressed biig file (and for decompression purposes, the heap-region boundary would be extended - to allow processing of this file).

BUT, that Apple’s Activity monitor is probably … buggy a bit (sigh… hell, what’s NOT buggy in MacOS?), because it apparently lies:

http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/buggy.png

Compare it, please, with the (correct) vmmap output:

[i]
Virtual Memory Map of process 197 (com.avast.MacAvast.MAD)
Output report format: 2.2 – 32-bit process

==== Non-writable regions for process 197
__PAGEZERO 00000000-00001000 [ 4K] —/— SM=NUL /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resour
ces/com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
__TEXT 00001000-00234000 [ 2252K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resour
ces/com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
__LINKEDIT 00f15000-00f18000 [ 12K] r–/rwx SM=COW /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resour
ces/com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
STACK GUARD 00f18000-00f19000 [ 4K] —/rwx SM=NUL
STACK GUARD 00f1a000-00f1b000 [ 4K] —/rwx SM=NUL
shared memory 00f1b000-00f1c000 [ 4K] r–/rw- SM=SHM
VM_ALLOCATE ? 00f29000-00f30000 [ 28K] r-x/rwx SM=PRV
VM_ALLOCATE ? 00f38000-00f40000 [ 32K] r-x/rwx SM=PRV
VM_ALLOCATE ? 049be000-04ee8000 [ 5288K] r-x/rwx SM=PRV
__TEXT 8fe00000-8fe31000 [ 196K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/dyld
__LINKEDIT 8fe68000-8fe76000 [ 56K] r–/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/dyld
__TEXT 90318000-904b2000 [ 1640K] r-x/r-x SM=COW /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
__TEXT 9582d000-95833000 [ 24K] r-x/r-x SM=COW /usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
__LINKEDIT 96dbf000-9722c000 [ 4532K] r–/r-- SM=COW /usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
STACK GUARD bc000000-bf800000 [ 56.0M] —/rwx SM=NUL
STACK GUARD f0000000-f0001000 [ 4K] —/rwx SM=NUL
STACK GUARD f0082000-f0083000 [ 4K] —/rwx SM=NUL
STACK GUARD fffec000-ffff0000 [ 16K] —/rwx SM=NUL
shared memory ffff8000-ffffa000 [ 8K] r-x/r-x SM=SHM

==== Writable regions for process 197
__DATA 00234000-00256000 [ 136K] rw-/rwx SM=COW /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resour
ces/com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
__DATA 00256000-00f15000 [ 12.7M] rw-/rwx SM=PRV /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resour
ces/com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
MALLOC (freed?) 00f19000-00f1a000 [ 4K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV
VM_ALLOCATE ? 00f1c000-00f1d000 [ 4K] rwx/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_LARGE 00f1d000-00f29000 [ 48K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_LARGE 00f30000-00f38000 [ 32K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 00f40000-00f42000 [ 8K] rwx/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_LARGE 00f42000-00f4c000 [ 40K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_LARGE 00f50000-00f55000 [ 20K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_LARGE 00f57000-00f6b000 [ 80K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_LARGE 00f75000-00f79000 [ 16K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 00f79000-00fab000 [ 200K] rwx/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_TINY 01000000-01100000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 01100000-01300000 [ 2048K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_TINY (freed) 01300000-01400000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_TINY 01400000-01500000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_TINY (freed) 01500000-01600000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_TINY 01600000-01700000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 01700000-01800000 [ 1024K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_SMALL 01800000-02000000 [ 8192K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_TINY (freed) 02000000-02200000 [ 2048K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
MALLOC_TINY 02200000-02400000 [ 2048K] rw-/rwx SM=COW DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 02400000-02b01000 [ 7172K] rwx/rwx SM=PRV
MALLOC_LARGE 02b01000-02d02000 [ 2052K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV DefaultMallocZone_0x1000000
VM_ALLOCATE ? 03c0a000-042e5000 [ 7020K] rwx/rwx SM=PRV
VM_ALLOCATE ? 042e5000-049be000 [ 7012K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV
__DATA 8fe31000-8fe34000 [ 12K] rw-/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/dyld
__DATA 8fe34000-8fe68000 [ 208K] rw-/rwx SM=ZER /usr/lib/dyld
__DATA a0072000-a00f0000 [ 504K] rw-/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
__DATA a0b83000-a0b84000 [ 4K] rw-/rwx SM=COW /usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
Stack bf800000-bffff000 [ 8188K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV thread 0
Stack bffff000-c0000000 [ 4K] rw-/rwx SM=COW
Stack f0001000-f0082000 [ 516K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV thread 2
Stack f0083000-f0104000 [ 516K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV thread 1

==== Legend
SM=sharing mode:
COW=copy_on_write PRV=private NUL=empty ALI=aliased
SHM=shared ZER=zero_filled S/A=shared_alias

==== Summary for process 197
ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=8712K resident=5300K(61%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=3412K(39%)
Writable regions: Total=65.1M written=26.2M(40%) resident=18.4M(28%) swapped_out=14.3M(22%) unallocated=46
.7M(72%)

REGION TYPE [ VIRTUAL]
=========== [ =======]
MALLOC [ 19.2M]
STACK GUARD [ 56.0M]
Stack [ 9224K]
VM_ALLOCATE ? [ 29.1M]
__DATA [ 13.6M]
__LINKEDIT [ 4600K]
__PAGEZERO [ 4K]
__TEXT [ 4112K]
shared memory [ 12K]
[/i]

Try to run something trivial (sleep 60; from a terminal), and the consumption will be also 600MB :).
BTW. anyway, what matters here is the RSS size (you can do mmap(500000000), the Vm size will go to 500MB, but the RSS stays low until the area is accessed, page-per-page).

Regards,
PC

Mac · 2007-11-16T03:30:03.000Z

Well I was going by Actual RAM use (labeled Real memory) for the Avast and com.avast.MacAva processes

But you’re right Virtual memory allocation is ridiculous in OS X, it shows VM size as 30.49GB on a PowerPC laptop that only has a 40GB drive :

zilog · 2007-11-19T16:56:32.000Z

.: Mac :. post:3:

Well I was going by Actual RAM use (labeled Real memory) for the Avast and com.avast.MacAva processes

Hallo,
did You mean the summary usage (gui + daemon)? Well, it’s around 50MB, but that’s adequate (and expected - for example on PowerPC, the dynamic code cache itself takes 8MB, virus database around 16MB (runtime cca 18MB), code segment 4MB… plus GUIs requirements)…

pc

Mac · 2007-11-20T02:02:44.000Z

Just wanted to make sure that was normal.

Thanks

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