Memory is not being freed?

[Muzosh]

I ran some memory intensive task today and it maxed out at 8GB (which was defined in my config). I was this in MacOS Activity Monitor next to a "Virtual Machine Service for limactl" process.

However, once those memory intensive tasks finished, the process stayed at 8GB indefinitely (until colima restart), slowing down my host Mac.

Is this intended behavior? I would expect the process to jump down to some idle value (around ~800-1000MB after fresh start).

[jandubois]

Is this using QEMU or VZ?

I know qemu has a "ballooning" device that can be configured to release memory back to the OS, but I don't know if that is supported on macOS. Either way, Lima doesn't use it.

So the best way to return memory to the OS is to stop your VMs when you don't need/use them.

[Muzosh]

Yea it’s VZ. Thanks for the info. On 10. 10. 2024, at 8:40 PM, Jan Dubois ***@***.***> wrote: Is this using QEMU or VZ? I know qemu has a "ballooning" device that can be configured to release memory back to the OS, but I don't know if that is supported on macOS. Either way, Lima doesn't use it. So the best way to return memory to the OS is to stop your VMs when you don't need/use them. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jandubois]

It looks like for VZ we are using a ballooning memory device, so I think it should have worked. Maybe file a GitHub issue about it?

[Muzosh]

Let me see if I can reproduce it and collect all details.

[okch-codes]

Same problem here. I use VZ for the Rosetta emulation.