Slow Lion - partially solved

Problems with Lion constantly beachballing were partially solved on my
work computer.

First discovered problem:
On laptops, Lion silently performs Time Machine backups to an NFS mount
of a local directory when the backup drive isn't available. The Time
Machine icon does not spin when this happens. When you view your hard
drive in Finder, it carefully erases all traces of this backup. It even
adjusts the numbers in the drive's Info window to not show the backup
size. What you do see is all applications beachballing because Time
Machine is an amateur hack on an aging filesystem.

Fix:
Execute 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' in Terminal. The hidden root
directory ".MobileBackup" will be renamed to ".MobileBackup.trash" then
eventually vanish.

Second discovered problem:
The Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM that comes with some MacBook Pro models
has random access speeds comparable to the drive I used in my Mac IIsi.
I rarely saw it best 1.5 MB/sec in normal use.

Fix:
Put a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in.


My upgraded work laptop running Lion now performs comparably to an older
stock laptop with half the cores running Snow Leopard. Not great, but
better. Virtual memory performance, QuickTime, Apple application
performance still suffers. Now if only there was a fix for Lion's
cumbersome GUI and buggy Autosave, my next home computer won't need to
be Linux.
--
I will not see posts from Google because I must filter them as spam

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:34:59 -0700, Kevin McMurtrie wrote:

> Problems with Lion constantly beachballing were partially solved on my
> work computer.
>
> First discovered problem:
> On laptops, Lion silently performs Time Machine backups to an NFS mount
> of a local directory when the backup drive isn't available. The Time
> Machine icon does not spin when this happens. When you view your hard
> drive in Finder, it carefully erases all traces of this backup. It even
> adjusts the numbers in the drive's Info window to not show the backup
> size. What you do see is all applications beachballing because Time
> Machine is an amateur hack on an aging filesystem.
>
> Fix:
> Execute 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' in Terminal. The hidden root
> directory ".MobileBackup" will be renamed to ".MobileBackup.trash" then
> eventually vanish.
>
> Second discovered problem:
> The Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM that comes with some MacBook Pro models
> has random access speeds comparable to the drive I used in my Mac IIsi.
> I rarely saw it best 1.5 MB/sec in normal use.
>
> Fix:
> Put a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in.
>
>
> My upgraded work laptop running Lion now performs comparably to an older
> stock laptop with half the cores running Snow Leopard. Not great, but
> better. Virtual memory performance, QuickTime, Apple application
> performance still suffers. Now if only there was a fix for Lion's
> cumbersome GUI and buggy Autosave, my next home computer won't need to
> be Linux.

I've just come across someone else with performance problems with Lion.
Maybe some of these articles help.

"Two things that really helped speed up my Mac (and maybe yours) - purge
and fs_usage":

<http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/190...s-that-really-
helped-speed-up-my-mac-and>

"Horrible disk performance on Lion with external drives connected (solved!
)":

<http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/142...k-performance-
on-lion-with-external-drives>

"Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management (Lion performance
problems part 3)"
<http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/204...deeply-broken-
in-os-x-memory-management>

The indexing on that site isn't very clear. There may be other articles
there which are of interest.

--
Paul Sture

In article <qqni69->, Paul Sture <>
wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:34:59 -0700, Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
>
> > Problems with Lion constantly beachballing were partially solved on my
> > work computer.
> >
> > First discovered problem:
> > On laptops, Lion silently performs Time Machine backups to an NFS mount
> > of a local directory when the backup drive isn't available. The Time
> > Machine icon does not spin when this happens. When you view your hard
> > drive in Finder, it carefully erases all traces of this backup. It even
> > adjusts the numbers in the drive's Info window to not show the backup
> > size. What you do see is all applications beachballing because Time
> > Machine is an amateur hack on an aging filesystem.
> >
> > Fix:
> > Execute 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' in Terminal. The hidden root
> > directory ".MobileBackup" will be renamed to ".MobileBackup.trash" then
> > eventually vanish.
> >
> > Second discovered problem:
> > The Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM that comes with some MacBook Pro models
> > has random access speeds comparable to the drive I used in my Mac IIsi.
> > I rarely saw it best 1.5 MB/sec in normal use.
> >
> > Fix:
> > Put a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in.
> >
> >
> > My upgraded work laptop running Lion now performs comparably to an older
> > stock laptop with half the cores running Snow Leopard. Not great, but
> > better. Virtual memory performance, QuickTime, Apple application
> > performance still suffers. Now if only there was a fix for Lion's
> > cumbersome GUI and buggy Autosave, my next home computer won't need to
> > be Linux.
>
> I've just come across someone else with performance problems with Lion.
> Maybe some of these articles help.
>
> "Two things that really helped speed up my Mac (and maybe yours) - purge
> and fs_usage":
>
> <http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/190...s-that-really-
> helped-speed-up-my-mac-and>
>
> "Horrible disk performance on Lion with external drives connected (solved!
> )":
>
> <http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/142...k-performance-
> on-lion-with-external-drives>
>
> "Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management (Lion performance
> problems part 3)"
> <http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/204...deeply-broken-
> in-os-x-memory-management>
>
> The indexing on that site isn't very clear. There may be other articles
> there which are of interest.

The last one (VM issues) remains a problem. The computer sometimes comes
to nearly a halt swapping while it reports 2 to 4GB of inactive memory.
Either it's not reporting correctly or the VM algorithm is totally
broken.
--
I will not see posts from Google because I must filter them as spam

On 2012-04-24 09:52 , Paul Sture wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:34:59 -0700, Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
>
>> Problems with Lion constantly beachballing were partially solved on my
>> work computer.
>>
>> First discovered problem:
>> On laptops, Lion silently performs Time Machine backups to an NFS mount
>> of a local directory when the backup drive isn't available. The Time
>> Machine icon does not spin when this happens. When you view your hard
>> drive in Finder, it carefully erases all traces of this backup. It even
>> adjusts the numbers in the drive's Info window to not show the backup
>> size. What you do see is all applications beachballing because Time
>> Machine is an amateur hack on an aging filesystem.
>>
>> Fix:
>> Execute 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' in Terminal. The hidden root
>> directory ".MobileBackup" will be renamed to ".MobileBackup.trash" then
>> eventually vanish.
>>
>> Second discovered problem:
>> The Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM that comes with some MacBook Pro models
>> has random access speeds comparable to the drive I used in my Mac IIsi.
>> I rarely saw it best 1.5 MB/sec in normal use.
>>
>> Fix:
>> Put a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive in.
>>
>>
>> My upgraded work laptop running Lion now performs comparably to an older
>> stock laptop with half the cores running Snow Leopard. Not great, but
>> better. Virtual memory performance, QuickTime, Apple application
>> performance still suffers. Now if only there was a fix for Lion's
>> cumbersome GUI and buggy Autosave, my next home computer won't need to
>> be Linux.
>
> I've just come across someone else with performance problems with Lion.
> Maybe some of these articles help.
>
> "Two things that really helped speed up my Mac (and maybe yours) - purge
> and fs_usage":
>
> <http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/190...s-that-really-
> helped-speed-up-my-mac-and>

With about 4.5 GB wired/active - using purge reclaimed 0.9 GB. This was
after a lot of work today on backups, VMWare Fusion/WinXP, PS, etc.,
etc., etc.... At one point during the purge, the system was as slow as
molasses, however. WinXP was running under Fusion during the purge and
when I went back to WinXP it was balky - so I had to exit it.

Took about a minute. (Previous uses of "purge" took a few seconds).

> "Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management (Lion performance
> problems part 3)"
> <http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/204...deeply-broken-
> in-os-x-memory-management>

Page outs do seem more than I remember with L|SL.


--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.